


Stormclouds Mask a Beloved Moon

by ivanolix



Series: Storm-verse [4]
Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: Adoption, Alternate Universe, Angst, Canon - TV, Canon Het Relationship, Established Relationship, F/F, F/M, Insanity, Married Couple, PTSD, Parenthood, Pre-Femslash, Prophecy, Wordcount: 10.000-30.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-10-05
Updated: 2010-10-04
Packaged: 2017-10-20 18:00:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 22,833
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/215587
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ivanolix/pseuds/ivanolix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kara and Sam are losing their sanity, and none of this is fair to Kacey</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings: strong language, some sexual situations, PTSD, children in dangerous situations

Sometimes, when she woke up in the morning, Kacey could remember the bad man from that cold place. He’d always fed her breakfast first thing, always the same way. He smiled at her and she smiled back, but didn’t mean it. She could feel the wrongness in him.

When the bad man brought her to Mama, she remembered someone else with that name and didn’t believe him. Then he’d pushed her down the stairs and it didn’t matter, because Mama was there to keep her safe. And when she tucked Kacey under the soft covers, Kacey could feel that she was someone special. Kacey reached for her finger and tugged her close, then.

She didn’t remember all that for long. Mama killed the bad man and brought her to Daddy, and Kacey started to forget that she hadn’t always been safe. And then she was loved, and even if there was something wrong, Kacey needed things the way they were.

Kacey played while Daddy worked, and when Mama came home she would hold her and Kacey would feel at home. When the nightmares came in the night, Mama was always there. And then Daddy was always there too, all of them together, and Kacey forgot everything bad forever.

Other bad people stole her from Mama and Daddy, for a time, and she dreamed of crying alone in a box until Mama came to save her. Someone else came then, and Kacey called her ‘mama’ without knowing why, until Mama and Daddy took her home safe again.

Then the other dreams started. The dreams where Kacey was running through a huge house, and Mama was walking towards the light and leaving Kacey behind. She cried, and clung tightly to her once she woke, and Mama and Daddy would hold her until she forgot. Then she would be hungry again, or thirsty, and life would go on.

It wasn’t safe, though. She could feel something different. When Mama wasn’t looking at Kacey her eyes didn’t smile, and she pushed her yellow hair out of her face even when she didn’t have to. Daddy tried to hide behind smiles, but his eyes were tired. Kacey would hug him and pretend she didn’t see. But the dreams wouldn’t let her forget.

*

Sam woke before the alarm rang out, for once. Kacey had shifted to the foot of the bed and Kara had rolled away from him in the night, curled on her side. Her hands, still damaged enough that she took pain meds to sleep, were tucked close to her. He breathed out and lay back, rubbing his hands over his face. The past week had been a glimpse of Hades, having to help Kara more than Kacey, and having to watch his wife’s face tighten and close off with each independence lost. And there were dreams she wasn’t telling him, he could tell. But after their daughter was tucked in, after the lights had gone down, she’d leaned into his arms every night and breathed out a sigh. There was still caring, once frustration had faded.

Now, glancing at the clock, Sam saw that it was almost time to get up. He leaned over, brushing his lips against Kara’s shoulder until she stirred with an inarticulate noise. “It’s morning,” he murmured.

She rolled slightly back to look at him, blinking awake and mumbling, “It’s not.”

“Deny all you want, but eventually I’ll have to roll over you on my way out,” he said with half a yawn, fingers dancing lazily across her stomach.

Kara snorted a little. “So all your post-fatherhood romance went to that mess of hair, huh Sam?”

“You know it’s true,” he answered, feeling a bit of warmth.

But she leaned back and looked up at him with an almost-amused challenge. “That’s all you got?”

It felt too good to just bend down and nibble at her lower lip, then have her kiss him back in a soft mess of after-sleep-ness. Sometimes, for a moment, he could forget all the trial that had led them here.

Soon it was breakfast for them all, and even though Kara could gingerly hold a spoon on her own again, it was not enough normalcy for her to want to share small talk over the meal (which, granted, would not have been a given for Kara regardless). As always, she just gritted her teeth and carried on.

Sam knew they were both ready for her to be healed so that they could get back to life. They needed it, after everything. And yet, a small part of him liked the feel of safety that came from all three of them together, nearly all day long in case Kara needed him. Even if it wasn’t all it seemed to be.

“The last of the meds are gone,” she said after she’d downed enough food to keep her from starving. She grimaced, but Sam knew better than to comment on it.

“I should pick up the laundry too,” Sam said. “It’s on the way. Can I leave Kacey with you?”

“Sure, why not,” Kara said with only half a sigh. She rose from her chair and went back to the bed, sprawling back against her pillow. “Come on, kid.”

She didn’t tell him that she’d had a tough night and needed more sleep. Whether it was because she knew Sam could tell or because she didn’t want to acknowledge that he could...did it matter?

Kacey dragged some toys with her as she crawled back into bed with Kara. One of his loves was half-cylon, one had a destiny, but all Sam saw was the irritations and the blessings that made his life _his_. And yet on leaving their quarters, he knew he was going out into a fleet that would never understand that.

*

“You’re not lying to me, are you?”

Julia Brynn brushed the hair out of her eyes, blinking at Paulla. “What?”

Paulla Schaffer gave her the look of a teacher, and Julia frowned at her until she said, “Well?”

“I meant it,” Julia said, glancing back down at the algae processing she was supposed to be focusing on. Her hands had always been tough, ever since the resistance, but now they were dried with chemicals and constant use. It fit her well, she thought.

“And if I ask your bunkmates, they won’t tell me you’ve been throwing up what food you get down?”

Julia turned with a glare. “As if I could hide the weight loss from your hawk eyes.”

Paulla smirked at her, and reached out to touch her arm. “Okay, so you meant it.”

“Making me angry doesn’t help,” Julia muttered, turning back to her work.

“I know you don’t want to talk about it,” Paulla said softly, stepping next to her to help with the work. Paulla’s hands were stronger, swifter, not plagued by the damages that Julia found comforting.

Julia chewed relentlessly on the inside of her lip and continued working. It had been almost two weeks since she’d cut her own heart out, given up on the one last hope she hadn’t dared to hope until it’d been thrust in her arms. The strange dreams she’d been having told her that she could get through this on her own, but it didn’t do anything about the hole in her chest. It didn’t help to hear occasional rumors about a half-cylon daughter that should have been hers, if she hadn’t been coward enough to give her up in a frantic stubborn gesture.

Paulla didn’t seem to know the meaning of gravity for desperate situations. Her belief that dry humor would fix everything was strong enough that, rankle as it might, it affected Julia. Something told her, though, that the questions that would come if she told her about the dreams—it would drive her insane to try to explain.

“I’m not lying, I’m just not telling you everything,” Julia said after a long minute.

“Yeah, well, that’s okay,” Paulla said. She put her hand to Julia’s back in a brief touch before turning to grab another algae tray.

Julia told herself that the comfort, the distance, was enough. Enough that she would stop seeing Kacey in every child down the hall, and stop thinking about how very real a possibility such a sight was now.

*

Meds in his pocket and laundry bag swung over his shoulder, Sam walked back home and prepared for another day of this leftover chaos. At least he could only count on one hand the suspicious looks he got going down the hall, and that was without Kacey’s innocent face to dissuade some of them.

The free air was driven from his lungs as soon as he opened the hatch to his quarters. Kara lay crumpled, sprawled on the floor like a rag doll. Kacey crouched at her side, shaking her arm with tears running down her cheeks.

Dropping the laundry bag, feeling as if there was no floor beneath his feet, Sam ran forward. “No, no,” he muttered, voice cracking with desperate need. Hands shaking, he knelt at Kara’s side, and Kacey’s frightened whimpers were no less than what he felt as he rolled her over. Her face was white, her body still. “Gods, Kara, don’t—you can’t—”

Kara’s pale eyelids flickered and her hand jerked. Sam resisted the urge to gather her tightly in his arms, feeling his heart finally beating again. “Kara?”

She opened her eyes, only bleary for a second before she frowned and tensed in his arms. “I’m not frakking dead, I just passed out,” she murmured.

Sam instinctively had his hand at her shoulderblades when she tried to sit up, even though the color was returning to her face and she felt solid. His stomach was still a knot. “Cottle told you no fast movements while on these meds.”

“I know, Sam, I was there,” Kara said peevishly.

“So, what, you were going to risk falling and cracking your skull just on a whim?” Sam demanded, not needing the picture of a reckless death that was not an unfamiliar image around Kara.

“I had to get out, Sam,” Kara snapped, pulling herself away from him and up on the bed, ignoring Kacey as she tried to cling.

“Kara, you could have hit—”

“I had to get out,” Kara said, louder than she had to.

Sam saw a mess in her eyes and his fear-induced anger twisted into bitter understanding. He sighed, lowering his eyes for a second. “And now?” he asked quietly, without looking up.

“Apparently I can’t even if I want to,” Kara muttered as she lay back on the bed, arms tight over her chest with the too-accustomed frustration of uselessness. Sam could almost see the walls rising around her as she tried to hide the shaking of her foundation. He hated what these constant dreams did to her, what they were doing to them. It spoke of Cylons, and everything that had happened that they didn’t want to remember. Farms, Leoben, occupation, enemies that couldn’t die, enemies that wanted their child. “I can’t deal with Kacey right now,” Kara said under her breath, staring at the ceiling.

Kacey, still rubbing at her nose at her fear for her mother’s fall, looked up with wet eyes. Sam nodded and said nothing, pushing the stress out of the way with a sigh. “Come on, let’s go for a walk,” he said as he scooped up his daughter and tried to be the simple support she needed.

Things would be better later. They always were. He and Kara, they always bounced back, dealt with the shit that life dealt them. And they had each other, surely that made it easier. Yet, it was being together with Kacey that had caused this. Hating himself for thinking it even for a second, Sam hugged Kacey closer and kissed her forehead.

*

Each time she drew, the picture changed shape. Julia had a single piece of paper and a pencil, all that could be spared in a fleet low on supplies. She let her mind disappear into the lead tip, inscribing nothingness across the cream-colored sheet over and over, curving each new line into the old ones, making the cobwebs more dense with each slow stroke. Sometimes it looked like circles, sometimes it looked like curtains, sometimes it looked like blonde curls and she wanted to rip it to shreds.

Still she let the pencil wander, and though she would no longer repeat scripture in her mind for too many reasons, she spoke to herself of life and not-death and how she might find the former and keep it. The soft scratch of drawing was real enough for her to hold on and keep breathing at the same, methodic pace.

As a friend, Paulla was invaluable, but it had been weeks now and Julia needed to think of self-dependence. The Cylons hadn’t caught up to the Fleet since the algae planet, Kacey would grow up in another woman’s home, and Julia should be free.

In these moments, with her paper and her quiet steady breathing, she thought she believed it. Days inched by, still too slow, but each one took a little more pain with it.

Julia needed to find something to replace it with before she was left empty again. Her lips softened from their tight line at the idea that she might thank the gods when it was over, for giving her the strength to move on even while she defied them. Irony was dearer to her than faith now.

*

Kara flexed her fingers inside the Viper before twisting and turning away from her wingman, letting the Gs rock her hard against her seat for a second.

“Good to have you back, Kara,” Athena snarked over the comms as Stinger protested sharply at the near-clipping of his wings.

“Even stuck in a bed everything was screaming of staleness—don’t tell me this Fleet is getting complacent again.”

“Why don’t you ask me on a morning that didn’t end with my daughter wetting our bed,” Athena’s remarked dryly.

Kara’s smile was half a grimace. She knew the feeling.

But that didn’t keep her smile from broadening when a few hours later she hopped out of the Viper to see Sam standing, Kacey bouncing in his arms. “What’s this?”

“Got promoted to back-up deck security chief,” Sam said, giving a welcome soft touch to her arm as he passed her their child. “Not that I’ll probably ever be needed, but I get a free pass here.”

“Her too?” Kara asked skeptically, even as Kacey giggled at the way Kara’s long hair stuck every which way once her helmet was off.

Sam quirked his lips and Kara grinned again, following him off the noisy deck.

“Good day, huh?”

“It’s not that rare, is it?” she asked, and the look in his eyes wasn’t too dark. It was only half a lie, and one they clung to on the ‘good’ days.

“The Agathons invited us for drinks,” Sam said. He said it in a light tone but she could see the tightness in his shoulders. “There’s a new bar on Galactica, and I thought I could leave Kacey at the daycare for the night.”

“Yeah, sure,” Kara said, the thrill of flying still running through her veins and keeping her thoughts focused.

Once she got back to the showers, though, and the white noise of the water made her mind fall back to default—she closed her eyes and she could see red plush hallways that then swirled into a chaos of yellow and blue. The memories stuck like tar, dark streaks on her mind no matter how much she tried to clear them away. Alcohol helped. Sam helped. Maybe with both of them, she could keep this day as one of the good ones.

“This isn’t half bad, right?” Helo said as they finally assembled at the noisy bar, where everything was already a little too warm and none too fragrant, and therefore perfect.

“Kara, before I forget,” Sam said, leaning close to her over the bustle as they found a table. “Kacey wouldn’t stay at the daycare, so I brought her to Dee’s.”

Kara frowned momentarily, but before the thought could vanish from her mind with the rest of everyday troubles, Helo had burst in.

“Dee?” When Sam nodded, Kara’s oldest friend groaned. “That’s who I got to watch Hera for us...”

Athena’s eyes widened, and an involuntary snort escaped Kara. She didn’t have to know any facts to know that, well, there were some situations you didn’t want to be in.

[“Poor Dee,” Helo finally said.](http://ivanolix.livejournal.com/156325.html)

“Let’s drink first to her,” Sam offered.

“To her safety,” Helo said.

“And mental health,” Athena added.

Kara just downed the drink in silence, feeling the buzz of company that would eventually turn into an alcoholic rush.

“Gods, it feels good to get away,” Helo breathed out, setting down his glass. “The days seem longer with a kid, you know? At first I thought it would be good, but after a while...” He trailed off, Athena nodding.

“Yeah, it doesn’t get easier, man,” Sam said. “It’s good, though. Just—not easy. Not ever.”

Kara remembered sleepless nights, waking in a sweat to find Kacey clingy, mind terrified by the same nightmare. She tried to shake the image free with another gulp of the booze. “Can we not talk about kids for one frakking hour?” she asked shortly.

Sam glanced to her, reading everything there was to be read. “Yeah, yeah,” he said, and the discussion carried on from there. But his gaze held hers a few seconds longer.

For a while she forgot. Even after everything, Sam still giggled when he had more than two glasses, even if he didn’t have much more than that. Kara didn’t have to think about it to get lost in that giggle, falling against him as her own laughter bubbled freely out, then kissing him to stop the avalanche of mirth and taste the tang. His hands, marking her skin with unabashed groping and daring her to do likewise, felt just like old times. More than one ‘get a room’ comment made the evening worth it, as for once the only thought in Kara’s head was just how ravishable Sam looked.

She’d laid all her burdens down at the bar’s door, and inside there was only joy for a few brief hours. A little tired, a little cautious with the alcohol, a little rusty with the banter with Helo and Athena—yet they were but trifles. For too many hours, she and Sam were as one in a hedonistic relief. Even the amateur pyramid-arcade players with their glaring mistakes and dumb expressions of pride just made her laugh again, tip back her chair, drown in the chaos.

Helo and Athena left first, yawning, and Sam dragged Kara into teasing them mercilessly. But when they were gone, and the noise settled to a rushing murmur, Kara lost herself half straddling Sam and letting their tongues do an old familiar dance. Humming against his lips as his hands dragged through her hair, Kara forgot that she was trying to forget and just felt the goodness of life. Hope still thrived.

*

“Oof, I can’t believe you live here,” Paulla said with a dry laugh as she helped Julia drag a fresh mattress back to her little corner of Dogsville. It wasn’t any more bare than everywhere else in the resources-deprived sub-community, but Julia always felt—and Paulla had commented—that she made bareness its own stubborn policy. “You know,” Paulla continued, “there’s some unused compartments around here that we’ve been using for a commune, and you don’t need to be religious to get in.”

Julia lowered the mattress down with a plop, and let the puff of dust rush away before she sat down. “I’m good here,” she said. Then, for no particular reason, she gave a light slap to the mattress next to her.

Paulla sat with an easy exhale, leaning back against the artificial wall that didn’t block out any noise at all. “Hey, are those new?” she asked curiously, indicating the area of the wall where a headboard would be.

Julia glanced over, noted the swirls of pencil on the walls, drawn in defiance of impersonality. It wasn’t as if anyone was going to need neat surfaces ever again, not with the eternal mess of this life. “Just drawings.”

“They’re good,” Paulla said with a nod, reaching behind Julia’s back to touch the marks. “In more than one way,” she added.

Julia gave a small noise in answer. She’d gotten good at denial, repression, transference, through ignoring everything while she drew. At least it was something.

Paulla yawned. “Wanna go catch dinner?”

For a moment Julia considered it. But she shook her head. “Not hungry.”

“Yeah, you know I don’t believe that,” Paulla said as she stood up from the bed, with half a provoking smirk.

“Yeah,” Julia answered, which was answer enough. Until she could keep the world carefully arranged around her everywhere she went, a safety bubble of forced emotional stability, an active life wouldn’t do her any good.

After Paulla left, she lay back on the fresh mattress and thought only about the improvement in physical comfort. Basic needs were all she could count on at all times, but she counted on them with something that she called satisfaction. Even if calling it didn’t make it so.

*

Kara and Sam stayed too late at Joe’s, and Kara found an apology on her lips when they knocked at Dee’s hatch and she came to the door with hair and clothes slightly mussed. She yawned, and handed over a blotchy-faced but sleepy Kacey, and didn’t even glare. They got off lucky.

She didn’t notice any change when she sunk down into bed, Sam at her back and Kacey at her front, sleep tugging at her eyelids faster than thoughts tugged at her mind.

And then she woke in dream-land, weightless in a spiral storm of primary colors, a room in a phantom Opera House just out of reach. Kacey ran through it towards an unnamed destination—Sam wasn’t there—and Kara was suddenly there as well, no body to feel, just a light that was almost too familiar. She felt someone else in the shadows, and more than anything she felt the weight of purpose, a call that spoke of a destination that she wasn’t sure she wanted to see. Not just for humanity, but for humanity’s children.

Kara woke then, and held onto Kacey tighter, cradling her close and refusing to rouse Sam this time. “It’s okay, baby, I’m still here,” she whispered to the child who shared her nightmares, even as all she could think of was the raw wounds that ‘humanity’s children’ had left on her soul.

In the dark, unable to fall back asleep, Kara thought that maybe New Caprica had never been put behind her. She and Sam, they’d just kept pushing it far enough ahead that it was on the horizon, ignorable. But the more they pushed, the bigger it grew, until now they couldn’t push it that far. The horizon wasn’t at a long enough distance to be safe anymore.

*

There were two ways Julia knew how to go through life. Surround yourself with people, or isolate yourself. As unlikely as it seemed, more than a few managed to follow the latter on Galactica. Julia watched the world just enough to know that it was still a minority.

Yet another former resistance fighter was joining the military. Yet another was with Paulla and the religious factor. Yet another was married, and might be trying for a family. All Julia saw were hands, fingers, flailing to hold onto something in hopes that it would hold them steady.

And every time she just turned away, terror sliding into her heart at the idea that if she grabbed onto anything it might just be torn away. No, she was more solid on her own, and Paulla aside, she could make it possible on this ship.

*

Drip. Drip. Drip. The pale blue wax splashed down from the candle, nestling in the misshapen mess of colors, looking like nothing and like everything she feared if she closed her eyes too long.

“Kara?”

She jerked, turning around at the sudden touch of a hand on her shoulder. It was Lee, brow wrinkled. “What?”

“You’ve been standing there for twenty minutes,” he said with worried eyes.

Kara glanced back at the pool of wax on the floor and swallowed. Twenty minutes? She could have sworn she stopped just a few seconds ago.

“Something wrong?”

“Nope,” she answered, too bright and too fast, hiding the white-knuckled clench of her hand behind her back. “Just distracted.”

Lee nodded, accepting it with only a little hesitance. “You have CAP in a bit, right?” he asked as he turned to walk off.

“Yeah,” Kara said, feeling the pull of her eyes back towards the candle. She forced herself not to look, and walked a few more steps forward. Ever since Helo had shown her those frakking pictures of the Eye of Jupiter, her mind hadn’t stopped making the connections. Only it was getting worse.

She gritted her teeth, walked through the mostly empty locker room and pulled her suit out. At least there was nothing in space that ever changed, nothing that would distract her eyes. Slipping into the leather felt like putting on an old skin. Then, grabbing for the helmet, the light caught on the glass frontplate and she flinched, dropping it as if it was red hot. “Shit!”

Her heart restarted as she saw it roll on the floor, the light catching it again, and the mandala she thought she’d seen in the reflection was gone. Of course it was. It had never been there. Biting down hard on her jaw, Kara yanked the helmet up and kicked her locker shut.

“See a ghost?” Racetrack called absently as she passed through wearing a towel.

Kara glared at her, but for a second she didn’t want to look at her helmet again. Frak, she was losing her mind.

*

“Look, there’s some concern about your men,” Kelly told Sam, arms crossed over his chest with a worried frown. “Some rumors, at least, about them being too quick on that case. To be honest, it surprised me too.”

Sam tapped his hand against his thigh, for a second having no words. “I don’t know,” he said under his breath, shaking his head. He glanced back at the marines he was currently in charge of. “Look, those vigilante attitudes aren’t good for anyone.”

“I know that,” Kelly said with a snort. “But Anders, there’s a good amount of people who think that wanting vengeance against the Cylons shouldn’t have to be vigilantes’ jobs, it should be a patriotic responsibility.”

Sam knew that the automatic tensing of his body was obvious, as was the way his hand clenched into a fist. Kelly sighed, but Sam didn’t trust himself to give an answer straight away. He was proud of the Fleet—he was proud of the way that they’d grown since that first reveal. Kacey was accepted, he and Kara were accepted. Even Jean and Cally and Galen had come around, admitted that there were grey areas. Then with Athena and Hera, it seemed like people had stopped making snap decisions on a mere word. But there were always the ones who still thought in black and white. Maybe some who thought that those who’d kidnapped his child were saving the Fleet from danger.

“I’m just saying, you should be aware,” Kelly said with a sigh. “You know you’re never going to get everyone to agree, but especially on something like this.”

Glancing back again, stomach twisting for a second as he remembered training men to take out every last skinjob or potential skinjob on Caprica, Sam didn’t blame the man. “I know.”

And he didn’t want to admit it, but he felt guilty. The ghosts of Sue Shaun, Wheeler, Kai, Coach, and dozens of others, screamed out to him from his mind. _Nothing that is Cylon should be trusted_ —life would be a lot simpler if he believed it. Staring at the marines as they marched, cocked their weapons, aimed, it was like he could smell the metallic air of Caprica again. Feel the radiation-colored sun on his skin as he crouched, fear at the back of his throat as any moment the toasters would find him, kill him. Some even pretended to be humans. It could just as easily be the cold blue of New Caprica, where a human or a Cylon waited around every corner to turn in “traitors”, whether they had evidence or not.

He closed his eyes, breathed in, but a touch on his knee made him reach for his gun in an unwanted panic. “Gods—” His hand was on the trigger before he knew what Cylon had found him.

But then his eyes opened and it was Kacey, come over to see him from where she usually played. The war disappeared in a flash, leaving him safe on the ship again, and his arm dropped in a guilt even more overwhelming than before.

“Daddy?” she asked, eyes a little wide.

“I’m sorry, Kacey,” he said, dropping to a squat and reaching out to stroke her hair. He’d almost drawn a gun on his own child—he felt sick. “I don’t know what I was thinking.”

“Dreams?” she asked, sucking on her thumb, her toy in hand.

Sam stared at her, trying to pull himself fully back to reality and the present. And he was failing. “Nightmares,” he said softly. He shuddered, wondering when he’d started losing himself. He’d always made the ship a safe place for him and Kacey, and for Kara, and he couldn’t see how one traumatic event for them could just rip all that progress away.

“Hungry,” Kacey said, nudging him, her caution gone in the childish way that Sam wished now he could imitate.

“Yeah, lunch time,” Sam said, standing up with a sigh. Frak, what was wrong with him? He was a father and a trainer, not a resistance leader. Whatever had made him forget that, now he had to fix. He gave Kacey a weak smile and beckoned over to where their packed algae lunch waited. He could still do this, or at least look like it.

*

Kara stared at the hatch that would lead to her quarters. She didn’t want to go in. She wanted to go to Joe’s, drink herself half to death, then crash on a bunk somewhere and wake with a hangover. It would be easy that way. Easy. She had a bitter longing for easy, even if she had to tear up her life and burn a thousand mandalas to get it.

What the hell had she been thinking, making out like she had a stable family? The only stability life could offer didn’t have her in the picture. Her fingers clenched and unclenched, and she almost turned and walked away down the easy path. Then she heard Kacey’s laugh, or thought she did, and Sam’s low chuckle in answer. They were waiting for her, frak them. In all the madness they’d decided that they wanted her, and when they had her, they didn’t seem to change their minds. Kara wanted it to be the same with her. But standing here, remembering how her mind didn’t seem to be in her full control anymore, she wasn’t sure she could trust herself to just want them. Her gut told her that they could never be that easy.

So she didn’t know why she spun the hatch open and pushed it in, like she did when things were supposed to be normal. Kacey ran across the room to hug her leg with a toothy grin, and it was—so simple. Kara smiled at her, and as she always had she loved her. But her heart wouldn’t stop twisting in the fear that it was with a part of her mind that was shrinking, despite her attempts to hang on.

Sam half-smiled at her, eyes warm. She half-smiled back. Settling back into the couch, Kacey crawled up on her lap and snuggled against her chest. Kara let her fingers comb through her daughter’s curls, but her heart kept pounding. What happened when she forgot what she was doing, lost another twenty minutes to a nightmare of primary colors? What happened when she came out of it, struck out without thinking? What happened when she finally admitted that this was too hard for someone whose mind had never been properly unscrambled, and when she admitted that she couldn’t remember why she’d ever thought things were getting better?

Kacey went to sleep and Kara put her in bed. Then she turned and paced away, going to clean her gun because her hands itched. She broke it into parts, jaw tight, hands strong, slamming down the finished barrel after she pinched her finger putting it back together. She punched the table with a curse, and spun away, pushing her stupid long hair roughly out of her face as she got up to grab for a drink.

Sam let his paperwork fall, came to her side. “Bad day?” he asked in a voice that sounded like he felt it too well.

“Normal month,” Kara corrected in a mutter, but even when she sipped down the alcohol, it wasn’t easy enough. She shut her eyes, wanting to punch something. Any moment she expected to see a mandala, an opera house, a cylon, anything that wasn’t real and yet wouldn’t stop following her around.

“Hey,” Sam said, hand on her shoulder.

She didn’t want to turn and look up into his eyes, but she did anyways. There was more than just concern born of love in them, though, and for a second she hoped, though she didn’t know for what. The dark weariness in Sam's eyes made her want to sigh through gritted teeth, but instead she pulled him closer, drawing his head down until their foreheads pressed together. “Normal is frakking insane,” she explained under her breath.

“As if I don’t know,” Sam answered, shutting his eyes with a grimace for a second. But his hand slowly circled her waist, not crushing her safe against him, just making sure she was there. In the silence, in the calm before a storm Kara felt was inevitable, they stood with tension all on hold. “I’ve got all my sanity counting on this,” he murmured. “You, and this.”

“Bad idea,” Kara said as a bitter laugh made a lump in her throat. “Worst idea.”

He swallowed, nodded. “Don’t know if I’m ready to lose that yet,” he admitted then. When his eyes met hers for a brief second, there was fear. “Don’t know if my mind...”

Kara wanted to burn the fear away before it joined with hers and buried them both alive. “We need to frak, Sam,” she said, lips brushing against his for a second.

He gripped her waist tighter for a second, but hesitated, doubt all over his face. “You know, I don’t know if I care about insanity,” he said, voice dark and desperate.

“Good,” Kara answered, feeling the relief of her focus narrowing on something simple and short-term, and muttering as she pushed them towards the door, “’Cause I don’t know if what I cared about was anything else.”

It wasn’t hard to find a locker, to drop their clothes, for Sam to sit back and for Kara to straddle him, trying to breathe steadily and focus on _this_. Electricity, itching under her skin, meeting with his, mingling, lighting her body on fire, lighting his, bringing them closer, joined, overwhelmed, intent, together. The slick slide of him inside her gave her jolts of something a hundred times better than the adrenaline that had been plaguing her for weeks. He couldn’t hold back a soft groan as she rocked down onto him, breathing heavy, and then somehow she was pulling his head to hers and kissing him. Eager, needy, and full of a chaotic desperation that she could taste mirrored on his tongue. He pulled her closer, nuzzling at her breasts when breathing grew too heavy for kisses. They drowned in each other, and the heat of it burned everything away, fear and common sense alike.

When they were done, both hoping they were whole and afraid they were hollow, Kara didn’t make the first move from the naked mess they were tangled in. She listened to her heart beat, listened to his, and pressed her lips together as she hoped the simple beats would align and point the way to the end. They didn’t. She didn’t expect them to, just hoped. And when Sam kissed her forehead, the weariness was there even if the tension was gone for a moment. A frak wouldn’t fix anything, and they knew it.

But when they went back and cleaned up, settling down with Kacey to find sleep, Kara thought she recognized the tugging on her heart. Not guilt, but longing again. She wanted to make this simple—ever since they’d decided on a family, she had wanted that. She didn’t know how, though, and now she was sure that she couldn’t make it. Not with this insane, broken mind. And for the first time, Sam’s presence behind her wasn’t sure enough for the both of them.

*

Some nights, Sam lay awake and almost wished that his wife and daughter did not sleep so peacefully. When nightmares roused them, his mind caught onto the problem and it was tangible, and distracting. His own nightmares weren’t so easily parsed, and when he couldn’t sleep at all, there was nothing to blame but himself. He stared at the blackness above the bed and counted deaths. One for almost every mission he’d ever led, more for every massacre, none quite so many as the list of dead from the very first attacks.

He still heard the bombs. Even if it was only when he was trying to sleep. That year of peace on New Caprica had healed so much, and yet when the Cylons came back to occupy, it tore that wound right open again. Kara and Kacey couldn’t heal that—he couldn’t expect them to, and he wouldn’t. He’d lie awake, body taut, trying to remember to breathe and know that when he did so he wouldn’t smell smoke and burnt flesh.

The resistance still pulled at him, magnetic in its inevitable power. He’d tried to give up war and failed, and he was starting to think it was because he thought he had to keep it. Instead of setting those memories free, he’d bottled them up. He’d tried to lock away the  pictures of the farms he’d liberated, full of dead women and women who wanted to be dead and women who weren’t sure whether they were alive or dead. He’d tried to hide the feeling of blood revenge, the desire to kill and murder and destroy for what the Cylons had done to his people. And he had hidden them. But they weren’t gone. Now, with something pulling Kara and Kacey into the Cylons’ web again, they started leaking out, as if drawn to the shared conflict.

He got out of the bed cautiously so they couldn’t tell, and sat at the foot of the couch. Knees half brought up to his chest, he rested his head in his arms and tried to breathe easily. Thinking of Kara was better until he remembered Leoben and Kara’s carefully worded fears. Thinking of Kacey was easier until he remembered Julia and the place that she had come from with her child. Nothing good in his life had come from good—it all came from pain.

Sleep finally took him, but when he woke in the morning, he knew it wasn’t enough. He stood at the sink and stared at the water dripping over his hands. It wasn’t going to be a good day, and when he saw Kacey hop out of bed, he sighed.

“I’m going to drop her off at daycare,” Sam told Kara when she got up, nodding towards Kacey and noticing that Kara looked twice as rested than him and yet still haggard.

She glanced sharply at him. “Something up?”

“It’s getting tough to have her there,” he admitted with a sigh, rubbing at the bridge of his nose. “But today it’s just—I’m halfway to the end of my rope already.”

Kara’s brow narrowed. “I thought,” she said, putting up a hand with a firm frown, “that we weren’t going to just abandon her.”

Sam furrowed his brow. Given the days before, he should have been more careful, but he was so godsdamned exhausted. “Kara...”

“So all that fuss about being attentive parents was just for when you didn’t feel _frustrated_?” Kara said, hints of betrayal and disdain in her voice and a twitch in her aggressive stance. “Because really, Sam, you should have told me, I would have given her up a hundred times already if that was the criteria.”

Sam didn’t mean to point his finger at her, but he did anyway—”Don’t put words in my mouth. I’m just saying it would be better for Kacey today, and since you don’t ever take time off.” He waved his hand, trying to brush off the irritation that conflict sprouted in his weary body.

“Better,” Kara intoned. Sam looked back, saw her meeting his eyes with a hard stare. “Sure, Sam, she’s better off among strangers who may think she’s an abomination.”

“Kara, you know them, and you were fine for letting them watch her when we went to Joe’s,” Sam protested, frowning.

“For a couple hours, yeah, not a whole frakking day,” Kara retorted. “You have no idea how their security is. And regardless of that, who the hell’s going to know how to deal with her nightmares?”

“All kids have nightmares,” Sam sighed, biting back the urge to say she was overreacting. She wasn’t; their history was complicated. He just didn’t want to negotiate it right now... He didn’t want to be patient, no matter how much he knew that he should.

“Not like these,” Kara shot back, one hand clenching at her side. Her lips were tight and almost bloodless. Kacey was trying to climb up into a chair, and Kara moved with short jerky motions to help her.

But Sam felt his stomach in a knot at the idea of this choice, the idea that taking a day to make sure he was in control of himself was going to ruin his daughter’s life. “Look, I don’t think I can handle Kacey today. It’s not about whether I love her or not—”

Kara didn’t face him, profiled in a tight stance as she gripped the back of Kacey’s chair. “Don’t do this to her,” she said in a low, open voice, and it was about more than just Kacey.

Sam felt frustration turn to anger. And this was just with Kara, who knew exactly what she was doing to him—he’d barely been awake an hour, and he was more certain than anything that he wasn’t capable of taking care of a job and his own screwed-up head and an innocent child who depended on him for everything. Not all at once. He wanted to shout, but instead he turned, resting his fist against the wall far too hard. “This was a lot more reasonable when we both cared about her safety,” he snapped, not thinking.

“What’s safe is if she has a frakking parent keeping an eye on her,” Kara shot back, eyes like dark flames.

“And what if I can’t, Kara?” Sam was getting too loud; he was failing, the fear and the frustration getting the best of him. He remembered that gun, and the sick feeling that he’d forgotten who he was with for almost too long. “What if I can’t even say that she’ll be safe with me?”

“Then you’re a frakking useless sack of shit,” Kara spat, hand shaking as it still gripped the chair, white-knuckled. He could see the breath catch in her throat, unsteady. “And I don’t know what the hell I was thinking, assuming that you at least had the will to fight for this choice, no matter how idiotically hopeful it was.”

Sam stared at her, and there were a thousand words to say that she didn’t understand, and yet a thousand ways her words hit all his fears. He didn’t have time to say any of them. Kara quivered with too much emotion, and then in a sharp move she’d grabbed a mug from the table and smashed it against the wall. It fell in glittering sharp shards and she stared at it, breathing heavily.

Then Kacey burst into tears. Sam watched as if outside his own body, as if watching a situation that he had started but had no power to control as it fell apart. Kacey curled up on herself, eyes wide as she glanced between her parents, and then down into her hands. The only sound filling the room was her weeping. Kara looked at her, all the anger suddenly gone and only vulnerability stark on her face. She looked broken—she looked guilty and crushed. Sam caught his breath, feeling again like he could barely stand, but his heart was cracked and he hated what he’d done.

Kara didn’t raise her eyes, though, and with arms at her sides as if she didn’t trust herself to use them, she turned for the door. Kacey sobbed, and Sam knew what Kara was doing, what he had tried to do, and what mess was left. He moved in to Kacey’s side, hands hesitant as he didn’t know what he could possibly do. But he had to try. Looking back, he also knew something else. “Kara, don’t leave now,” he said in a voice that snapped in the middle.

She stopped at the door, back facing him, but didn’t move. Kacey’s cries felt like stabs to Sam’s heart, telling him exactly what he’d done, and he could barely feel like he was worthy to even give her comfort. But he and Kara were all she had. “Don’t leave this mess,” he called to Kara, as he wrapped his arm around his daughter and sharply swallowed the first rush of guilt.

Kara didn’t. She came back, her face a mess of emotion that welled further in her eyes, and she knelt at his side. “Don’t cry, Kacey,” she said in a hoarse whisper, gingerly putting her hand to her daughter’s back. “We love you, Kacey. We’re—” She clenched her hand, looking unable to put anything into words.

“We’re sorry,” Sam put in, all he could manage.

Kacey buried her face in Kara’s chest, and with a shaky breath, Kara embraced the child with all the clearly self-hating remorse she had in her. And Sam, knowing nothing else he could do, put his arm around his wife and cradled his family in his arms. Each breath came haltingly as he tried not to fall apart, just hold his loved ones and pray to the gods for forgiveness for—for everything.

It seemed like an hour before Kacey grew silent. None of them moved, and Sam felt Kara flinch every so often as if she didn’t trust herself to stay. He didn’t know what to say, and for once she was the one to find the words. “I’m losing it, Sam. Staying here is just going to hurt you both.”

Sam closed his eyes and leaned his head back until it hit the table leg with a thump. “Stole the words from my mouth,” he said in a dead voice.

Kara laughed bitterly. “What the hell are we doing to our kid?”

Sam gripped them both tighter and didn’t say a word.

*

“Look, we’re not weak,” Sam had finally said, after they’d handed Kacey safely over to the daycare and found the proper place for harsh confessions. Their shared insecurities, madnesses, seemed like a crushing burden when put in words. “We can get through this.”

“I’m seeing illusions,” Kara had pointed out the most obvious problem, feeling the more they talked that she was a wreck who didn’t deserve a Viper let alone a child. And yet, she couldn’t give up. What else did she have?

“Frak, we are not the only ones who had to see horrors,” Sam muttered, crossing his arms. “We jumped back into routine without thinking. Maybe we need time, space, to just—deal.”

Kara flinched at the words. “What does that mean?”

But Sam leaned over his knees, staring at his hands as if he’d just got an idea. “Maybe you’re right, maybe the daycare isn’t good for Kacey in a lot of ways. And if we need to have time to talk more, fix our heads, then we need something else.” He looked up at Kara, and some of the pain had left his face, leaving a strange determination. “What about Julia?”

Kara stared.

“Kacey’s surrogate mother,” Sam explained.

Kara clenched her fists as she remembered that name. “Sam, I—”

“We know she loves her,” Sam interrupted her. “And that’s what matters, right? Making sure Kacey’s safe and loved?”

For a moment Kara forgot that she was losing her mind as she shook her head. “What are we supposed to say, Sam? What is she going to think? That we’re giving up our child because we’re too much of a mess? Because we’re not—frak it, I can’t give her up just like that—”

“Gods no,” Sam added, a little horror on his face. “But Kara, she’s obviously not a small-minded woman. I think she’d understand. And I can only hope that she’d want to help Kacey.”

Kara bit down on her first thought, that they had no idea at all what she was like. Then she remembered. Then she forced herself to recall Julia’s face as she’d held Kacey on that fateful day, the joy and the tragedy displayed on an innocent woman’s worn countenance, and Kara remembered how her heart couldn’t help but identify with that fear of inevitable failure tied to Kacey’s life. If she’d been in Julia’s place now, she knew she would have done everything in her power to make Kacey’s life better.

And yet, all she could do was give a painful laugh. “And if it doesn’t get better?”

“It can’t end like this,” Sam said in a low voice, shaking his head. “We’re better than this, we’re _stronger_ than this. I’m not accepting war as an excuse to lose myself, and definitely not one to hurt my family.”

Kara nodded once and met his eyes, feeling the burn as she curled her hands into determined fists. “Fight till we can’t, then.”

Sam nodded. “Fight till we can’t.”

*

Julia sighed and pushed her hair back from her face. Paulla had yet again asked her to come to Joe’s at least once, let herself get hammered, and for the first time Julia was thinking that maybe she was ready. She thought that perhaps she’d closed off all the painful parts of her mind so well that even alcohol wouldn’t loosen the locks.

Her shift was over, and she returned to her place in Dogsville, limbs loose and just weary enough to make the prospect of intoxication worthwhile. She turned the corner to her dwelling, and then stopped short.

Her breath caught in her chest at the sight of the blonde woman standing there, hair pulled back from her face and dress blues, hands tight at her sides as she stood in Julia’s dwelling. Her face was the kind of grey-pale that Julia had once seen every day in the mirror—death warmed over. But the light in her eyes was strong, and Julia remembered her. Kara, Starbuck, Captain Thrace. Kacey’s mother. Julia still couldn’t catch her breath.

“Julia Brynn,” Kara Thrace said, taking a small step forward and putting out her hand. Her mouth was tight, but her intent was firm and non-hostile. “Can we talk?”

From the shaking in Julia’s mind that she couldn’t stop, she knew that she still wasn’t over all that had happened. Despite everything she nodded, and swallowed the sudden doubts and admonitions of her common sense. She had to take this.

Julia Brynn, without any logical reason, waved her hand to offer a seat in her dwelling to Kara Thrace.


	2. Chapter 2

“You’re leaving?”

Julia turned on hearing Paulla’s question, still putting belongings into a duffel bag. Paulla could mask a lot of emotions, but the hurt was clear on her face now, and her hands were clenched at her sides. “Not permanently,” Julia answered, brow wrinkling a little. She put her canteen in the bag and looked through its contents. Dried algae, a jacket, her small knife—she didn’t have much else, but thankfully much wasn’t required.

“So it’s true, Starbuck came by yesterday?” Paulla asked, still not at ease as she came closer to look straight at Julia. When she twitched, her loose dark hair flicked to the side distractingly.

Julia didn’t look straight back, and felt her jaw stiffen. “Yes.”

The defensive changed to boldness. “I’m sure we could find a place where you didn’t have to see her,” Paulla assured, slowly reaching out a hand for Julia. “But you didn’t even ask...”

“I’m not leaving.” Julia looked up to meet her eyes. Honesty smoothed things over fastest when it came to Paulla—and more than the honesty of omission that Julia usually resorted to. “I’ll just be spending my days somewhere else on the ship.”

"Where?"

“Her quarters.”

Paulla froze, making Julia sigh a little as she zipped up the duffel bag. She’d been going almost on autopilot this morning, and though she would never say it, Paulla’s piercing questioning ways were welcome to break her out of the daze. “What are you doing?” Paulla demanded after a second to gather her thoughts.

“Watching over Kacey,” Julia said, swinging the bag over her shoulder. It hit her back with slightly less force than saying those words aloud.

“Oh hon, oh no,” Paulla said, articulation not a priority as she gripped Julia’s elbow and made her sit down on the bed. Her eyes were overflowing with dark concern. “You need to tell me everything before you go anywhere.”

Julia didn’t flinch or look away, but she didn’t have anything to say for a moment. One hand clenched until a knuckle popped, and then with her jaw still a little stiff she waved a hand and then sighed. “Starbuck and Anders are having problems, and they don’t want it to affect Kacey. So they came to me, because I’m trustworthy, and they want me to take care of her while they get things back on track.”

Paulla blinked. “What?”

Julia realized that she didn’t really want to remember Kara Thrace’s conversation as she’d stood awkwardly in Julia’s Dogsville dwelling and relayed halted but firm words that were too familiar. That wild look in her eyes, almost visibly sparking from her stance, and the desperation in her situation, were more relatable than Julia had admitted to. Kara thought she was messed up—and out of a strange impulse, Julia didn’t tell her that she’d come to place that wasn’t any saner. Instead, she’d followed a heart she wasn’t sure she still had, leaping for a chance to help her baby even if she wasn’t hers. Maybe it was seeing the reflection of herself in Kara’s eyes that made her do it, for her just as much as for herself. “They didn’t have an easy time with the war,” Julia said to Paulla, surprised at how calm her voice was. “And taking care of Kacey is stretching them too thin, right now.”

“You’re doing this?” Paulla said, clasping Julia’s hand and looking straight into her eyes. “You’re going back into the hell you only just managed to get over?”

“Yes,” Julia answered. And yet, she didn’t pull her hand away from Paulla’s, and still sat facing her on the bed. She was not a child, nor was she insane. Not the kind that Paulla was thinking.

But the brunette said it anyway—”This is insane.” Paulla shook her head, putting out her other hand to rest on Julia’s knee. Her touch was always soft, even where Julia was bony. Leaning in a little to meet Julia’s gaze, Paulla said in slow words, “Did you think at all about this, before you said yes?”

Julia frowned at her. “I think I know my business better than you.”

“It’s not going to make it any easier,” Paulla protested, putting a hand to her forehead as if the situation gave her a headache. She let Julia’s hand go, taking a deep breath and then not saying anything. “This—”

Julia stared at her, and then felt the daze crack. “Paulla, she’s my frakking child,” she snapped. “I don’t care what I should or shouldn’t be thinking, I want to keep her safe. I’m not going to be selfish if that means ignoring when she’s in trouble.” What she didn’t say was that the memories that rushed in when she thought of Kacey made her sick, and a part of her desperately needed to replace them.

“Then what?” Paulla demanded, standing up and turning to face Julia, arms across chest. “What do you think’s going to happen if this is more than a one-time thing? You think you’ll be able to be detached?”

“That’s not the point,” Julia muttered, standing up. Her shoulders spasmed as if to shake off the crushing weight of her psyche. “And I know it’s going to be more than that—she said it would probably be a few weeks at least.”

“Then don’t do this,” Paulla said, grabbing her hands and pulling her close. The worry on her face made Julia ache just to see. “You’re going to kill yourself trying to be something you're not, and I can’t bear that.”

“I know what I’m doing,” Julia said. Putting her heart together and breaking it again, but at least it was something. Strange how any movement seemed worthwhile after so many months of trudging through the same circular motions.

“That’s not even denying the point,” Paulla pointed out as she dropped her hands in bitterness.

Julia swallowed, but had no answer. As good as her word, she walked towards the shape of half her nightmares, leaving her one friend standing behind.

*

For the first time in months, Sam had to say goodbye to Kacey in the morning. Kara had left already with a grimace and a muttered, “I don’t want to see it.”

Julia Brynn then came right on time, cropped blonde hair pulled tightly out of the way and only a determined expression on her face. She didn’t look at Kacey, but Kacey looked at her, and for a moment Sam didn’t know what to do.

“I’m sorry we had to ask this,” he said, rubbing at the throbbing ache already between his eyes.

“You didn’t have to ask, I’d do anything for her,” Julia said. Even though her tone was flat, and she didn’t quite meet his eyes, Sam sensed solidity beneath the outward mess. There was trust, even if they didn’t say it in words.

But Kacey still cried when he hugged her goodbye, and there was a hint of pain on Julia’s face as she gestured for him to leave. Each step was heavy as he left a piece of himself behind, and it only worsened with the lightening of cares. He could think clearer now—and he didn’t want it to be that easy.

Work was still work, and even though he hadn’t lost himself by the end of the day, he felt ready to go home. He wished he could trust himself to just relax. Knowing otherwise, he walked down to the infirmary and spoke to Cottle, and all the bristling discomfort overruled everything else. Explaining the situation almost made it worse. Outlining the fear, the bitterness, the anger, the terror, the hopelessness, dragged it all to the forefront. For a moment he forgot where he was, and jerked back with a drop of his heart again.

“This is not new, son,” Cottle said with a face that looked more lined than usual. “But if it’s the both of you, going at it alone is going to add to everything. I’d suggest a good therapist—but frak, I’d suggest that to every person in this damned fleet, and there really isn’t an option. Your wife’s religious, though. If you can handle it, I’d say talk to an oracle, and meditate if you at all can. The kid?”

“First thing we thought of,” Sam said.

“Well then.” Cottle grunted and walked past Sam, onto the next crisis of the hour.

Sam took the cue to leave and went to wait outside the pilots' lounge. It got to him after a while, and he paced, finding himself eventually in front of the wall of death. Glossy pictures, dull pictures, wrinkled pictures, torn pictures...so many that his eyes could glaze over and see nothing, as he thought of nothing and felt nothing. The absence refreshed, even if it didn’t sink into his bones like true goodness.

Kara found him there, coming up beside him with arms hugging her own chest. She stood for a moment in silence, then snorted. The dry amusement made him turn his head quickly in surprise. “Gods, Sam, I think we’ve been doing it all wrong,” she said, with a low dark laugh. She gestured almost flippantly, too much so to be anything but grave. “Maybe a bit of us did die on that rock, but it’d make a lousy picture for this board.”

A chuckle escaped Sam as he turned, muscles loosening just a little. “Here lies the sanity of Kara and Sam Thrace-Anders.”

“Loving friend, resting in whatever the opposite of peace is on frakking headstones,” Kara continued, voice trailing off but not completely.

“Lousy picture, yeah,” Sam said. For a moment neither said anything, staring through the board before they made a move.

“I saw that frakking mandala in the patterns of the flashing lights on deck today,” Kara said under her breath. “By now, I’m starting to wonder what options there are. Maybe I should just try living with half a brain. No one really believes I had a whole one to begin with, so...less morbid that way.”

“You had a whole brain,” Sam protested, but without much emphasis. “I think.” The morbid humor made Kara’s lips quirk painfully, and she nudged his elbow. He sighed, “Cottle says we should try talking to the oracle...can’t hurt, right?”

“Not sure anything can but us,” Kara answered, but cocked her head.

Sam reached out, though, as they turned to walk away from the military sector of the ship, and let a soft touch fall on Kara’s arm. She didn’t turn, but her hand dropped to her side, brushing against his as they walked side-by-side. If Sam closed his eyes and let the ship just hum around his head, he could almost remember the good times, the smell of fresh air and the rush of her every touch against his. It wasn’t meant for that now—the touch was grounding, as was her harsh grip right before they entered the oracle’s chambers. But clinging to that rock-solid stubbornness beneath all the crazy was what they were meant to do, and he hoped that it was the first step towards bringing back those easy feelings.

*

Children were frighteningly easy. Julia had forgotten. She’d taken a seat, lowering herself onto the couch in Kacey’s quarters as soon as Anders had finally gone. Breathing, as if she had to focus on it or else she’d suffocate, she watched Kacey as she moved around her home. Unhappy and quiet for the first few minutes, then quick to gather her toys together and bob around the quarters with purpose, blonde curls peeping over the tabletop or around the edge of the couch as she guided her toys on some imaginary mission. Ignoring Julia.

Gods, how it hurt. But Julia let herself drown in the throbbing hurt for a moment, until it was familiar and tolerable. She accepted it as the mood of the hour, and kept watching.

After what couldn’t have been more than half an hour, Kacey toddled up to Julia. “Wanna walk now.”

Julia stared at her for a second, swallowing a little at how those soft eyes could stab right through her heart. She pushed that aside, gave as much of a smile as she could as she managed to say flatly, “We need to stay here, honey.”

Kacey frowned. “Not honey. Kacey.”

Julia’s forced smile spread just a little. “I know.”

“Julie,” Kacey said, poking her knee and looking up with serious eyes.

Her throat tightened, but Julia managed a short nod.

“Daddy does walks,” Kacey added.

“I’m not your daddy,” Julia answered, and didn’t mean for it to come out so pathetically. So sad. For the first time in a while, she felt the urge to reach out and touch someone, offer a comfort that was almost mutual. It felt unnerving, though, especially with Kacey’s distant expression. She felt her smile fade, only the bones of it staying behind.

Kacey stared at her with the directness of a child, but if she read anything in Julia’s face, her words didn’t reveal it. “Play,” she said, thrusting a toy into Julia’s hand.

She looked down at the worn Viper model and let her thumb run over the edges for a second, then looked back at Kacey. This was not what she had planned, because she hadn’t planned anything. “Play what?”

“Vipers,” Kacey said, and ran off to the other side of the room to grab another toy. Darting back with an identical toy in her hand, she bounced a little. “Fight,” she ordered, flying the toy towards Julia’s hand.

Instinctually, Julia’s hand raised to defend her face, a pre-adrenaline rush spreading through her system immediately. The toy Viper slammed into it and Kacey said, “Hey!”

Julia laughed mirthlessly. This was just as insane as Paulla had said it would be.

“Fight,” Kacey ordered again with a frown, and flew the same flight again.

This time, Julia raised her Viper, dodging Kacey’s strike and saying, “Boom.”

“I win,” Kacey said with a grin.

“Do not,” Julia countered automatically, pointing her Viper at Kacey’s again with the jerkiness of someone who’d forgotten how to put life into moving. “Boom. I win.”

Kacey stared at her, then made a weird half-laughing noise and gestured with her Viper. “Again.”

And so, following this childlike insanity, Julia did what she had to do and found that she didn’t resent it yet.

*

If there had been a sun, it would have set long before Kara stormed out of the alcove where an Oracle of Pythia had housing. It was a stupidly random wish, out of all the things that had been ripped away from her, to miss sunlight. But as her hand clenched automatically, it was easier to blame it on that and half kick the bulwark as she walked down the corridors.

Sam was at her side, as always. “Did it help to chew her out?”

“It did.” Kara’s breath came out shaky, but she hadn’t lied.

The woman was not exactly the most helpful person Kara had ever spoken to, but in a way, that had helped. She wasn’t invested in anything but her beliefs, and after all the frakking concern, Kara had found the detachment refreshing. She could kick back her chair, stare stunned at her, and throw her words back into her face with a little extra heat. The woman just blinked, sighed, and said that Kara had a long journey ahead of her. No sense of hurt, no annoying attachment—as soon as Kara left the room, it was over, and she realized that some of the frustration had stayed there.

But a new one had been added. “Why didn’t you talk, Sam? Think this is just my problem?”

Sam looked at her, though, with a furrowed brow. “No, I’m messed up too, but...talking has never...” He waved a hand, grimacing.

Kara thought she might get it, though. “Yeah, you’ve always been a bit in your head.” Thoughts were never a weapon enough for Kara, to strike out against the world when it attacked her. Words were just barely enough.

“It felt good to hear you say it, though,” Sam added.

Fingers twitching, Kara muttered, “Well someone has to call people on their goddamn assumptions.” But the twitch in her lip was almost a smile. It had felt good—not pleasant good, but the kind of good that was like a bruise from a really good workout, indicative of something worthwhile taking place even if it did come with pain.

Kacey was just tucked into bed when they got back, and Julia Brynn quietly handed the responsibility back and slipped out of their quarters, not quite meeting their eyes. For a moment Kara felt guilty, but it didn’t last long when she felt ready for sleep and wasn’t itching from the overwhelming nature of the day.

“Mama,” Kacey said through a yawn, rolling over to snuggle up to her.

Kara watched her daughter go to sleep, gingerly brushing her fingers through the feather-light curls. Then she closed her eyes, head falling back on the pillow as Sam crawled into bed after them. Gods, this life sucked. Everything kept telling her that nothing was forever, not this life, not any life, not even these feelings about life. Kara was just tired of believing it, and afraid that one day she wouldn’t. As long as she could make it through, though, she’d do it. Come Hades or high water, she’d frakking prove them all wrong.

*

“One, two, three, four,” Julia counted with Kacey, sitting cross-legged on the floor.

“An’ five, an’ six, an’ seven,” Kacey continued, putting the underwear in a pile. “Done now?”

Rubbing at her eyes with one hand, Julia sighed. “Sure Kacey, done.” There wasn’t much monotony around the child, that was for sure. Every day held a little more improvisation, and it was more wearing than Julia would have thought. By the time the days ended and she had to drop her little fantasy, it only hurt just long enough for her to drop into bed and sleep. She still had the opera house dreams, but when her last thoughts before sleep were of Kacey’s playful smiles, they didn’t scare so much.

Every morning she stood in one of the heads, staring at her face in the mirror. It was less gaunt than it had been, less disturbingly shadowed and pale, but when she pressed her lips together she didn’t like the creases that appeared. She wondered what she was doing, inflicting this on Kacey and herself. Gripping the edge of the sink, she wondered if it was worth it. But every day, she’d pick up her bag and walk to the officers’ quarters, and she’d smile for Kacey as if she meant it.

By the middle of each day, she almost did.

“Want stories, Julie,” Kacey whined, after she’d done the “chore” that Julia had assigned just to add more to their days.

“I have no stories,” Julia answered, shaking her head.

Kacey stared at her incredulously.

Looking down into those fresh eyes, a little of Julia’s walls broke down. “The Cylons took all my stories, honey.”

“We go get them back?” Kacey asked, frowning.

Julia shook her head sharply, chewing on the inside of her cheek. “Shouldn’t have said that. Don’t know why I said that. Why don’t we look at your stories?”

For a little while Kacey dawdled, seemingly bored, but Julia’s determination lasted long enough for Kacey to lose herself in her own world again. On the outside looking in, Julia almost felt safe. Kacey didn’t demand that Julia live in any world but her own, just as long as she listened.

*

“I am not conflicted over what happened,” Kara threw at the oracle’s face. “The Cylons violated my frakking life. I hate them. I kill them. End of story.”

The woman closed her eyes for a second, leaning a little further over the table with the incense. “All of them? What about Athena and your daughter?”

Sam almost expected Kara to march out again. He wouldn’t have blamed her, not when even he flinched at the question.

“It’s not the same and you frakking know it,” Kara said in a dangerously low tone.

“So you hate individual Cylons, like this Leoben,” the oracle answered, voice calm and smooth. “But to hate an entire race that you have proven not to think universally...to hate a race and not a deed...it’s to make it more tangible, because somehow you have a hard time hating others. Kara Thrace, why do you think something’s wrong with you?”

Kara stared at her, and Sam’s attention was caught, not having even a guess at how she’d answer.

“Do you think you could have done better?” the oracle followed, after Kara said nothing.

“No frakking way, there was nothing to do,” Kara said under her breath.

Sam swallowed, hearing the tremble of hated doubt.

“You don’t believe that about anything, do you,” the oracle asked, arranging the things on her table. “That’s what’s tearing you apart more than the memories. You think...that you’ve always been damaged...and maybe if you hadn’t been, maybe you could have won before it was too late.”

Kara snapped upright after a moment, with a flash of her eyes. “You don’t know frak about what goes on in my head other than what I tell you, remember?”

But Sam leaned over, hand to his eyes, and breathed in. It was easier to fear truth than lies, and he could feel the fear emanating from Kara. Worse, he could feel it from himself.

“Things happen to us beyond our control,” the oracle said. “To you, to your husband, to your daughter, to everyone. Sometimes we’re left with marks that we couldn’t have avoided. But sometimes we make them worse, because we try to take control of everything when we can only control what matters—what happens now.”

“Oh for frak’s sake, you aren’t even getting that from the scriptures,” Kara retorted, entire body tense.

“Scriptures aren’t the only truth,” the oracle said, shooting a straight look into Kara’s eyes, then Sam’s. Her gaze was surprisingly clear when she said, “You’re overwhelmed with trying too hard. You know it, or else you wouldn't be here, not when so much else calls for you. But you are flawed, not damaged.”

For the first time in a while, Sam saw a part of Kara that he hoped he’d never see again—the part that wanted immediately to retort that statement, not just to be contrary, but because of an innate belief that it would be true. Yet again, he knew that whatever mess he was facing, at least he could honestly think he could get out of it. Sometimes, with Kara, he wasn’t sure if it was the same. Maybe she didn’t know either.

“You know, I’m just here for my frakking kid,” Kara finally said, dark anger in her voice. “For me it really is about the war, got it? If you can’t help me deal with that, fine, I’ll do it on my own like I had planned all along.”

“Kara...” Sam found himself saying before the oracle could answer. “Nothing exists on its own.”

“Frak, I am not here to have my entire life poked and prodded about,” Kara said, kicking her chair back as she rose to her feet.

But Sam didn’t move, staring at his hands as he sat bent over his knees. Maybe the Cylons hadn’t shaken his belief in himself quite yet, but they’d twisted his life so far around that he wasn’t sure what normal, or healthy, could be. His entire world was rooted in war, somehow. The more he looked at it, the more he wondered how he could just forget a little piece of an overwhelming whole.

Kara walked to the door and then stopped, and Sam didn’t see her face but he could picture it, all the vulnerability that she couldn’t bear expressing released for a moment where no one could see. She turned around with body language that was designed to indicate “frak you”, and took her seat again with aggressive resignation. She was still trying. Somehow, she still believed that there was success of a kind.

The oracle didn’t speak for a long time, and Sam was starting to think that despite her provocations, she knew what she was up to. Given all the time they were taking away from family and putting into this, he had to hope hard that he was right.

*

It was becoming routine. Get up, leave Kacey, fly Vipers even though the Cylons hadn’t attacked in weeks, and then do something to try and straighten out her mind. Sometimes she and Sam went to the oracle’s. Sometimes they went to Joe’s and played the arcade version of pyramid in silence. Sometimes they sat in the quiet and Kara gripped Sam’s hand as she closed her eyes and pictured peace after every last frakking Cylon was dead. Sometimes, when Kara could hardly breathe for the pressure in her lungs of terrors past, they frakked until they were worn and limp. Then they’d go home, hold their daughter for a few minutes, and fall asleep before something triggered a nightmare.

It was a godsfrakking routine. Kara was up later this morning, gathering her things together when Julia Brynn came by. Kacey looked up and said hi, and Julia barely returned the look. For a second, Kara caught something in the other woman’s eyes.

“Hey, you okay?” Sam asked Julia as he moved to the door.

“Just a bad night,” Julia answered with a tight smile, nodding. “I’m fine.”

Kara followed Sam out the door, and as the hatch closed behind them, she heard Kacey’s voice and her heart ached. Even on the nights she slept almost well, and Kacey too, the days were never bright. She took a detour in the gym to slam into the punching bag before her CAP, and the endorphins were enough for a few hours.

When Sam met her outside the pilots’ head, though, his face was darker than even she felt. She didn’t like to see it—she didn’t like to feel worry for him when she barely had enough mind to worry for herself. But she cared, and so she couldn’t help it, and so her brow furrowed as she drew near.

“Do you think we’re being selfish?” he asked without preamble.

Her frown deepened. “What is that supposed to mean?”

He brought a hand to his brow, breathing out and shaking his head loosely. “I’ve been noticing Julia. Every day when we leave, and come back. We go off, and I can’t help but wonder what we’re leaving behind. Have you seen her face?”

“Sam,” Kara said, arms crossed. “Why the frak are you thinking about something that’s none of your business?”

But he answered her directly. “Isn’t it? We give up all of our troubles with Kacey to her, don’t you think she deserves a little consideration from us in return?”

Kara stood and felt empty of all emotion, a shell of a body holding in a mind that threatened to shatter. “I don’t have the energy. You want to spend your dregs on someone who can take care of herself, you go right ahead.” She started to walk past him.

“Frak, Kara, I’m just trying not to lose my humanity to this,” Sam snapped, but it was under his breath as he followed her, too heavy to mean more than what she meant.

Kara just couldn’t think about it, that was what she told herself.

They went through with the rest of the day, fulfilled their routine, gave all they had to an exercise in forgetfulness that didn’t work, and came back to their quarters with only the dull satisfaction of doing what they could. Sam was asleep before Kara could stop pacing, feeling too lost in the emptiness for sleep, and then too caught up in a ever-turning wheel of pointless thoughts to sleep either. Kacey had crawled in and lain half over Sam, and by the time Kara scooted in, she could close her eyes and not feel either of them. Before her dreams hit, she took that feeling for what it was worth and just slept.

The next morning she made it to the pilots’ locker room before losing it. She showered, stripped down, and then stood in front of her locker room and stared at her name plate for over a minute. Starbuck. She wasn’t Starbuck anymore, and she wasn’t Kara, she was some strange hybrid that couldn’t even find solid ground. “Frak,” she swore, and slammed her hand into the locker door. She wasn’t dealing with this today—she just wasn’t.

And so she went to the only place she had left. It should have felt peaceful, her “home”. Instead, as she walked up to the hatch, all she felt was slightly more certain that she wasn’t going to crack today. She spun it open and walked in, and then remembered.

Julia Brynn looked up sharply from the table where she stood, next to the chair that Kacey stood on, arranging her toys in a long line. “What is it?” she asked, with sudden concern.

Kara was caught for a moment in that look, in a pattern she recognized of insecurity and determination and worry and defiance, all of them there for no good reason, just in preparation after a life of harsh needs. “Nothing,” she said. “Just not flying today.”

“Stay, mama?” Kacey asked, looking around Julia as Kara lowered herself onto the couch.

Kara stared at her, afraid for a second that something would break, and then not quite able to be relieved when it didn’t. All she said was, “Yeah, Kace, today.”

“An’ Julie stay too?” Kacey asked, eyes lighting up.

The caught-off-guard look on Julia’s face turned into a mess that Kara couldn’t decipher, but it settled behind a complacent mask. “If she wants me to,” she said with a slight nod to Kara.

“Whatever Kacey wants,” Kara answered, leaning her head back on the couch. Frak, this was not routine, and she both hated and loved it for that.

And Julia stayed. Kara wasn’t expecting to find out exactly what that meant. For a while she just lay back and rubbed at the bridge of her nose, eyes closed so that all she saw were the sparks behind her lids. The taste in her mouth was of disaster and omens, and she wanted to wash it out with alcohol, preferably until her mind stopped working entirely. But even if Kacey hadn’t been there, she couldn’t. That road wasn’t one she wanted to go down, not just yet.

“Mama, come play,” came a little voice to her ear an hour later, and a little tug to her tanks. She opened her eyes to see Kacey standing there with a smile.

“Hmm, what?” she asked, frowning a bit.

Julia looked over at her, shrugged awkwardly. “She wants us to play house with her.”

“Kacey,” Kara started, feeling her hands tense up, “I don’t—you know sometimes grown-ups—” She stopped short, seeing the quiet look in Kacey’s eyes, the weariness from the nightmares that troubled her just as much as Kara. Closing her eyes and nodding, she sighed, “Fine, play.”

Kacey dragged her off the couch with one hand, pointing for her to sit in the center of the floor. “You’re the mommy,” Kacey said, as Kara lowered herself to a cross-legged position, wondering why she was still able to do this craziness. “And you’re the best friend,” Kacey said, with a bit of a grin up at Julia. The other woman smiled back stiffly before sitting opposite Kara.

They found themselves staring at each other, and Kara had never felt more awkward. Her spine tingled with the sense of how strange this was, and yet as Kacey ran to get her toys, talking to herself as she did so, Kara couldn’t break the mood.

“Apparently I’m her best friend,” Julia said flatly, glancing back. “She doesn’t get out much.”

“Neither would you, if you’d had her life,” Kara retorted.

“I don’t get out at all,” Julia answered, with a straight look into Kara’s eyes. There was no subtle meaning under her words, Kara realized; she held onto only a few thoughts, and spoke them honestly.

“A social life’s overrated,” Kara muttered, looking over where Kacey had a huge armful of toys and wondering where half of them had come from. She looked back and saw that Julia was still staring at her, and frowned. “What?”

The other woman dropped her head, shaking it fiercely as she mumbled, “She’s definitely your child, that’s all.”

It hit Kara, then, what she’d seen in Julia’s eyes. She’d been expecting jealousy, and so hadn’t realized need when she saw it. Kacey finally came back, and started arranging her toys around the floor and in Kara and Julia’s laps, and Julia just smiled at her, but Kara could see the edges of the mask now. It was a little too familiar, and for a moment she couldn’t look at anything else.

“Something wrong?” Julia asked, catching her gaze with black challenge in her eyes.

“I don’t know what you think of me,” Kara said, slowly and with each word coming out painfully even as she kept holding Julia’s eyes. Kacey sat in her lap, and Kara absently stroked her arm. “But I don’t want this. What you’re doing for Kacey, for me and Sam, it—” She couldn’t do it, her gaze cracked, and her mouth twisted.

“You’re having a hard time just surviving, I know,” Julia said. “I was there right after I got back from that planet.”

Kara didn’t have to look up to hear the sharpness in her tone, and each breath felt aching in her throat as she held onto Kacey. “I thought I was too,” she said under her breath. “But I thought I’d come back.”

Caught in her own story, Kacey leaped from Kara’s arms making a loud exploding noise, throwing herself across into Julia. The woman cradled her in her arms almost gingerly as she said, “You never come back all the way. Not if something’s always there to remind you. Someone.” Her eyes dropped, and she raised a free hand to shove stray bits of her cropped hair out of her face.

For a while they sat as Kacey played obliviously, but Kara’s mind was caught, stuck, on the fact that Sam had been right. Julia didn’t have to spell it out in words when her face did it for her, and guilt sucked Kara’s strength away. Kacey was just a kid who needed a mom, a dad, a best friend, and all she had were broken people who were afraid that just looking at her would bring back the wrong memories. She gritted her teeth, vowed to keep working her ass off to fix what she could and keep her mind from being overwhelmed by that. Kara was better than that, surely.

“I’m glad you’re doing what you’re doing, I am,” Julia said, even though the words sounded ripped out of her.

“Don’t say you’re not bitter,” Kara said, looking up at her. “I don’t believe a frakking word.”

“I am bitter,” Julia answered, tightness in her mouth. “But that’s—that’s because of what the Cylons did. I do know that. I don’t blame you. You’re not my enemy, you’re not even my rival. Kacey made the right choice, and I want you to come through with what you’re trying for her sake.”

Kara stared at her and didn’t know what to answer. Thoughts and words alike were stuck at the back of her throat, and she cleared it, but it didn’t help. “The world sucks for kids.”

Julia seemed to understand, though. An odd smile crossed her face, with no mirth in it whatsoever. “And yet sometimes she’s all I hold onto.”

Kara met her eyes swiftly, saw Julia pull back behind her walls again, but grimaced. “Poor frakking kid. She doesn’t need people like us caring for her.”

“No, not at all,” Julia breathed out, losing a little of her tension again. It revealed rougher edges, but Kara could deal with that. It surprised her how much she could deal with it.

“Lunch, Julie,” Kacey said, leaving her toys to lean against her with a complaining expression.

“What do you say?” Julia answered, before looking up at Kara. “And maybe your mama wants to do it?”

Kara laughed. “Lunch. Yeah, no.”

“I can do it for us both, then,” Julia said. “And Kacey will help, to make up for her whining.” She rose to her feet and sighed, but moved with purpose towards the stove.

“Play with mama,” Kacey protested, not moving.

Julia looked back. Kara met her eyes for a second before turning to Kacey. “What did daddy say about listening to Julia?”

“You’re mama,” Kacey said, face all contrary.

Kara gave her shoulder a little push, pressing her lips together. “And I say listen. Just—you can call her Mama Julie, if that helps, as long as you listen.”

The shock on Julia’s face as she turned around, almost pale in her sudden tension, made Kara bite down on her jaw. But it was right. She didn’t care if it was awkward, not now, not when everything was. Sam had been right, and they’d been selfish. Kacey needed more than that, and so did Julia, and Kara didn’t have the strength or the desire to be possessive.

“Go help Mama Julie, now,” Kara ordered, giving Kacey a push.

That was that. They pretended nothing had happened, continuing with the actions that seemed pointless in the grand scheme of things and yet almost worked. Kara couldn’t take it much longer, and her mind started spinning away from her, and she flinched until she couldn’t feel safe any more and left Julia and Kacey alone again. But she nodded to the other woman when she left, and Julia nodded back, and for the first time there was no hurt hiding behind. In the open, maybe, but they could handle that.

Kara hoped they could handle everything.

*

Kacey remembered when every day was spent with Daddy, playing war while he thought she was just playing with her toys, flying her viper because she didn't have a toy gun. The one day when Mama took her to another ship and they just played games, it felt different. Even at the daycare, it was about play-fighting with as much fun as they could manage. Kacey was used to life like that.

It was easy to like Mama Julie when she was just Julie, because she wasn't very good at hiding things. She didn't play with Kacey because she didn't know how, and so Kacey play-fought and figured out that Julie was good at fighting. Just, like Kacey, like Mama, like Daddy, she did it a lot more than she said it.

Kacey might like Julie, though, but she didn't like the way everyone was unhappy. Everything was a little nasty, somehow, and Kacey didn't have the words to figure out what. Then Mama called her Mama Julie, and it was easy to _really_ like her.

Mama didn't stay home, still, but she sometimes came home at weird hours and didn't send Mama Julie away. That was nice, even when they didn't seem to notice Kacey, and talked about other things with each other. Kacey liked it better like that anyway, because Mama and Mama Julie sometimes thought love meant not letting her have fun. It was nice not to go between them all, but have some of them together.

Daddy and Mama still skitted a little, when they were alone with Kacey. But they smiled a little more, and Mama Julie told Kacey that that was why she was there, to help everyone be happy again. "You're not happy," Kacey said with a frown, sitting on Mama Julie's lap and looking up at her face. Mama Julie just shook her head, but Kacey knew. And when Daddy invited Mama Julie to stay a whole evening for dinner with them, and it was strangely quiet, Kacey still smiled and sat on all their laps with her toys, because it was better than the alternative.

Mama and Daddy seemed to think so too, and Mama Julie seemed to agree. Kacey didn't know how the world was supposed to work, but she liked this. She liked when Mama Julie tucked her into bed, because Mama and Daddy were doing the dishes. She liked when Daddy told a story at the table and Mama laughed, and even Mama Julie cracked a smile. She liked when Daddy gave Mama Julie a hug goodbye, while Kacey sat in Mama's lap and hugged her close. She liked that she had nice things to think about, even if they didn't come all the time.

But she didn't like the nightmares. She didn't like the dark looks, even if they weren't at her. She didn't like that there were no happy laughing times, no tickle fights, no stories told with smiles. Kacey wanted things she didn't know how to ask for, and yet knew without being able to put it into words that there was no way she'd get them.


	3. Chapter 3

At first, Kara speculated that she'd hit a plateau, and she wanted to use it as target practice. Then she fell back a step, and thought it might be the first milestone towards getting better; it was what Sam told her, in any case, and she sighed and listened to him because it was easy.

"The mind is a strange place," the Oracle told her, and scowlingly she couldn't deny it. Just hate it. The strangeness, her mind, all of it.

If she cut the crap, she hated most things in life. The fleet, once barely even present on her personal DRADIS and certainly not any matter of strong emotion, now managed to piss her off almost daily. She'd ignored them long enough that, walking the halls, they didn't seem to think she existed. An elbowing here, a crowding there, a sharp word when she stood too long and stared at the red plush carpet that _couldn't_ be there.

"Frak you," she'd grate out, but more from fear than irritation, blinking hard to unstick the primary colors from the back of her eyeballs.

"Kara, hey," Helo had said, the one time it was him, and she'd looked up startled into his eyes. "Did you...are you all right?" Wariness hid at the corners of his mouth and eyes, born from too few visits between their respective families.

Even then, Kara didn't have the will to explain, and just put up a hand and moved on. She could pour her guts out to the Oracle all frakking day long, but it didn't seem to bring her peace. Except she didn't even see something that made sense like Cylons everywhere. It was that stupid mandala and that stupid Opera House, and the more she saw the more she dreamt, and the more she dreamt the more she cursed the gods.

"Do you or don't you see the pattern on the floor?" she'd snapped to Sam, not looking at the scattered laundry on the floor that was all but mocking her in its swirl of impossible colors. He'd again assured her that it wasn't dangerous insanity, meaning well but not hitting on the truth at all. Yet he'd gone to the marines, and she'd gone to CAP, because being insane certainly didn't inhibit anyone else from flying Vipers.

Her body moved in time to the force of the Gs pressing on the space ship, drowning in it, blood pulsing in the rhythm of the purring engine that resonated even through her airtight suit, mind drifting in search of the essence of flight to drown out the rest of the world. The comms and her wingman kept breaking through at all the wrong times, jolting her mind forward to a place that made no sense, making her fingers tighten around the controls. She was Kara Thrace, Viper pilot extraordinaire, but even the familiarity of flight held too much that fed the breaking of her mind.

She hid the trembling of her fingers when she hopped out of the Viper, ignoring the random blue stain on a red and yellow deck uniform as she pushed past them all, done with flying for the day. Shower water fell icy cold on her back, and with the bare floors and her pale skin there was nothing to provoke the wrong thoughts. She filled her lungs with the damp air and gritted her teeth, despising how sanity seemed like just a brief rest-stop.

Tugging on her clothes, she made to go back home before her next CAP, knowing that nothing could possibly make this worse, and even a session with the Oracle after Sam got off probably wouldn't help enough. If this was a plateau, it was becoming more invasive by the day, and she only clung to hope because it was simpler that way. She craved simplicity.

The universe gave it to her in the worst way. Kara only had to walk out of the locker room, down the halls, before suddenly they were gilded and bright, her boots coming down to meet velour carpets in lush crimson. Her heart thudded and her hands clenched, but the faster she moved the wider her vision became, enveloping her in a waking dream where she was soon running down stairs as she was sure she'd been walking through Galactica's halls. If she'd trusted herself, she would have reached out to feel how real the vision was—but terror gripped her soul that it would pull her down and never let her back up for air.

Then in a blink, the tall gilded doors backlit with a frighteningly familiar glow vanished, becoming the hatch outside her quarters. Kara stood, not realizing for a few seconds that her jaw ached with holding it so tight. Her skin itched, and she yanked the hatch open.

Inside was distraction enough. Julia sat on the bed, cradling Kacey in her arms, and Kara's daughter was crying. Heart switching its beat but not dropping the pace, Kara swallowed and rushed in, brow furrowing. "What's wrong?" she demanded, somewhat comforted despite everything that Kacey reached out her arms to Kara.

But Julia's face was pale and tight, and for a minute she didn't answer. Kara's arms settled around Kacey, holding the sniffling child close, falling into an old pattern without knowing what to do about it—but her fear beat almost faster before Julia spoke with an empty tone. "She was afraid you were leaving for the lights. Some kind of dream where you were running and she was..."

Kara swallowed, lips pressed together before she finished Julia's thought. "You don't have to describe it, I know."

Then the other woman's eyes met Kara's, and the gleam was half-frightened. "I don't have to guess, though. I shared it."

Kara felt her eyes widen before she blinked once. "What do you mean?"

"I had the same dream," Julia admitted as if the words tasted like vinegar. "Ever since I knew Kacey was with you...it gets in the way of my sleep too often. Just like that. Just like she said."

"You're kidding," Kara managed, in a tone that said just the opposite. Her mouth was dry as a cotton puff, an uncomfortable tingle running up her spine at the parallel.

Julia frowned darkly. "I don't kid."

Somehow Kara had guessed that long ago. "Frak no," she muttered under her breath. "Frak no, not more."

"Don't you dare not tell me," Julia ordered harshly, her stance both needy and withdrawn at the same time.

Staring at her, at the woman she'd reluctantly let into her little makeshift family, Kara felt a scream build at the back of her throat, a demand for days without destiny. "We've been sharing that dream for months. It's not just a dream."

Julia's eyes darted between Kara and Kacey, fingers curling tightly around her knees as she still sat on the bed. "What the frak is wrong with us?" she grated out.

"Hell if I know," Kara murmured, holding Kacey tighter, the tension in her brow so much that it hurt. One thing managed to break through, new and yet something that had been building for days. She knew it was true the moment it passed her lips. "It's getting worse."

Julia Brynn didn't flinch, didn't tremble, didn't have to catch her breath. She just stared at her fisted hands and sat still, as if the world had been screwing with her sanity since day one. In a realization of sudden kindredship, Kara realized that it had. Julia was just a darker, quieter, side of the coin that Kara had been etched into. And the universe was tossing them high, and only gravity would determine where and how hard they would land.

"Why us?"

It was the scariest question, and Kara just laughed mirthlessly under her breath, as Kacey pressed terrified against her chest and the three of them knew nothing.

Destiny was the worst kind of bitch.

*

Julia hadn't signed up for any of this. She couldn't remember her life before the attacks that well; since even if forgetting what sleep meant as she ran across an irradiated world hadn't purged her mind, the Farms definitely did the rest. But she didn't need to remember much. Just that she'd had free will and peace. Things wrenched from her grasp by the Cylons in little pieces, and the less she had the more they seemed to take at once.

The dreams were coming with a vengeance, battering at her slumber the more time she spent with Kacey and her family. The paradox was, it just made her cling to them and the twisted kind of understanding they offered. She wasn't a whole healthy person—yet she still felt torn, shaken, bruised by this. The fact that it made her feel more unsettled than before gave her heart cause to race, because nothing this serious should be happening to her.

"Love you," Kacey said with a small smile one afternoon, hugging her goodbye. "Come back?"

She'd swallowed and smiled shakily, and wondered when she'd become part of a destiny instead of being just _this_ , being Kacey's surrogate mother. Walking to and from the Thrace-Anders' quarters got her strange looks, especially when she had to take Kacey to the bathroom and her role was obvious, but it didn't make her as uncomfortable as not being near them at all. On her own, she knew that the Fleet either saw her as a freak or would if they knew everything. She had no illusions about the state of her sanity—barely there—but it was reflected with comprehension in Kara and Sam's eyes, and so she fell into their little gravity well with weary gratitude.

Her quarters in Dogsville, once the only place on the place she cared to stay, were now growing almost dusty. Julia departed early each morning without a glance behind, and whenever Kara and Sam returned and even if they didn't invite her to stay, it took her a long time to go to lie restlessly on her mattress. Monotony had once been her safety line, something she could clasp onto while she took control of life. She didn't deserve the chaos now, but couldn't avoid it either, and the monotonous routine of the rest of the ship grated at her like sandpaper. It wasn't merely fear of nightmares that kept her from sleeping so close to people who had no idea how complicated life could get.

And they kept judging, kept giving strange looks—worse, they tried to help. Julia might be officially relieved of duties, leaving her time to spend all her day with Kacey and family, but there was at least one tie to the rest of the world that hadn't been untied.

"What can be so bad that you're avoiding me," Paulla asked finally, standing by Julia's quarters when she finally returned, later than usual after a desperate talk with Kara about the intensity of their dreams. The dark-haired woman had her hair pulled back, exposing all the emotions on her face, too complicated for Julia to read even if she wasn't distracted with her own worries. But the ultimate cause of her presence wasn't hard to figure out.

"It's not you," Julia said after a pause, knowing that denying the avoidance would be a pure lie. "I just can't take this."

Paulla knew her well enough to not be hurt, apparently. She shifted forward, arms crossed over her chest, dark eyes piercing as they met Julia's. "I'm worried. You weren't sure about this at the start, and now it seems to be driving you crazy."

For a minute Julia just stared back, hand rising to brush at her hair. The growing length of it marked just how much time had already wasted away, but staring at Paulla made it seem like only yesterday that they'd shared a meal sitting on the edge of her bed, plain algae but almost tolerable. The look in Paulla's eyes throbbed with an ache of waiting too long to say this, and Julia could only feel almost frightened at how little time it felt like she'd had to adjust. Yet she knew that she had to. "It's not." She pursed her lips, gave a firm nod. "It's not driving me crazy." No, that would be everything else.

"Don't lie to me," Paulla said, but her determined tone cracked a little with pleading. "We've been through a lot, Julia, with the resistance and New Caprica and everything, and so even if you could fool me you shouldn't. Please just tell me—I won't do anything if you don't want me to, but I need to at least know."

The words should have reminded Julia that this was her friend and advocate, the closest person she'd had for almost a year, but all she heard was the questions. All she imagined was trying to explain the insanity to the entire crew. Forgetting that it was Paulla, not knowing what that meant anymore, she jumped in to save her own sanity before it was threatened. "No, you don't need to know. I'm not a child, Paulla, I can handle my own life."  
i  
She expected a little hurt, but the raw pain on Paulla's face surprised her, unnerved her almost immediately with how she couldn't take it. "Okay, fine," Paulla said, uncrossing her arms and not meeting Julia's eyes, throat pulsing as if she was swallowing roughly. "You know, that's good. It would probably solve a lot of worry. Because Julia, believe me, it's not easy to worry about you. It would solve a lot—" She swallowed again, jaw tightening for a minute, slapping a hand on her thigh as if to shake herself loose from something.

Julia chewed on the inside of her lip, worrying at it, remaining in a stolid stance as her body was on edge. She didn't want this, but she never got what she wanted, and honestly didn't know anymore how to get it. So, eyes failing to reach Paulla's, she just took it. There were no words for this that wouldn't just invite questions.

"I really don't know what you're doing," Paulla said in a voice full of emotion. Her eyes rose when Julia couldn't help but look, and the open look made pain at the back of her throat in an old familiar way, something she couldn't bear. It wasn't what she'd expected from Paulla—she hadn't even thought to fear it, all those months just appreciating a presence that didn't make her flinch.

An apology seemed appropriate. Julia didn't know how to make one. She just met Paulla's eyes for a too long moment and tasted a hint of blood from where she'd bit the inside of her lip too far. A desperate curse at the Cylons bubbled up, but wouldn't be released, not least for the sake of the half-Cylon child who had flipped her world upside down.

The hurt growing piercingly more obvious on her face, Paulla turned without another word and walked swiftly away.

Julia remained on her feet outside her quarters, empty, not wanting to stay. The fact that her first thought was wanting to go back to Kacey, to the only thing she could handle, tore what little heart she had to shreds. The world was wrong—and she was unwillingly at the center of things. Lips in a bloodless line, she finally lay on her mattress and hoped for dreamless sleep, but hoped more for the morning to arrive. Maybe she'd learned to love the torture, but it felt now like her role in the Thrace-Anders family was the only comfort she could rely on.

She couldn't dare to bring the thought of Paulla in. It would break her.

*

"Are you humming?" Kara asked, giving him an odd look.

Fingers twitching, Sam's mouth twisted as he looked at her from across the table in their quarters. "Song stuck in my head," he finally said, not consciously recognizing it before.

Kara grimaced as if the news was offensive. Maybe it was, to her. It seemed over the past days that she only used words to tear at the world around her, not because she cared what lay underneath, but because she couldn't do it to herself like she needed to. Like a caged animal, she raked her claws at anything that dared provoke—only Sam knew as well as she that the most fear was directed inwards. Their "therapy" wasn't going well.

Sam felt, helplessly, that he was circling the drain but that Kara was going down, and he didn't have a lifeline to hold onto to save even himself, let alone her. They were starting to cling to Julia, of all people, and the sense of stability she brought Kacey and therefore the family. She might not be any happier than them, and her idea of stability might be a poor imitation of what would be healthiest for them, but she knew what she wanted.

It felt nice to come home and see her and Kacey just...settled. Worried, not all together, sometimes lost in the same crazy destiny nightmares as him and Kara, but just a little more capable of dealing with it. They were smaller pieces on this chess board, and a little more comfortable as a result. Sam had worried about Julia when she first started coming, seeing the woman's tense way of expressing the trauma they all had—now, though, he saw nothing more than a family member, whose worries and troubles were shared with them all.

"I don't need to stay here," Julia said under her breath, frowning one night when Kara returned with heated eyes. "Kacey won't mind if I don't stay."

"You said you would," Sam responded, looking at Kara and wishing that he had the resources to help. Julia clenched her jaw and he knew she would stay—it was just who she was. And despite the discomfort, she and Kara knew how to deal with each other. Awkwardly, but effectively.

He tried to focus on Kacey, play with her, give her attention while he could and while she had nothing else. It always struck him how obviously Kara's child she was—tough, quiet, and yet acting out however she could. It was frustrating, but more than that it was nostalgic, if anything could be that from no further back than a few months ago. She still had the same stubborn, childish nature. Nightmares and family upturns alike, Kacey always had a viper to fly in his face, and a smirk to follow it when he failed to come back fast enough.

"Wanna see Vipers tomorrow," Kacey informed him from her perch on his knee, as he sat crosslegged in the center of their chambers.

"I'm not really allowed to take you," Sam answered, landing the battlestar toy on her leg, losing himself in the simplistic play.

"Mama won't," she pointed out, frowning and shoving the battlestar out of the way of the Vipers in her hands. "You have to."

Sam sighed. "Baby, it's Mama Julie's job to watch you these days, you know that." He hated every time he had to say it. There was a scratchy tune coming out of a radio somewhere in the background, and it was starting to drive him nuts.

"Why can't I go with you?" Kacey pleaded, looking up. "Wanna stay with you again."

He sighed, shaking his head, bouncing her a little on his knee before he realized that it was an irritated twitch. The music was bothersome—he turned, distracted, to where Julia was standing at the table. "Can we turn the music down? Kacey doesn't need that."

The woman stared at him like he was a toaster. "What music?"

Sam's brow furrowed. "You don't hear it? It's—" He stopped short, realizing that the word 'obvious' was not what he should say. His heart twisted a little, sickening, wondering if he'd really gone that far. The scratchy radio-tune still danced at the back of his head, maybe just his imagination but definitely present. It dug into his psyche like something from childhood. He couldn't make out the melody—but he grit his teeth and tried not to. Madness started with a slippery slope rather than a series of steps, but he felt like this was a leap.

"I need a drink," Kara said under her breath with a look as she passed by.

He was supposed to stay with Kacey, with Julia, with all of them. He'd wanted to only a moment before. But now, all he said was a hasty. "I'm right behind you."

Sam didn't look back to see Julia's face as he followed Kara, his hands twitching. Her face probably bore evidence of the same conflict that sat heavily in his stomach already. Abandonment was eerily too close to what this was, and frak him, but he knew it. He knew he and Kara were probably doomed, too, and so he kept doing what he was doing, guilt and all. They'd keep grasping for the last shreds of sanity that would, were the gods gracious, keep them from disaster.

*

"Frak," Kara gasped out, scratching at Sam's shoulders as he rocked deep into her, her legs tight around his waist. Sensuality burned through her, almost painful in its intensity, molten fire relentless in connecting her with the reality of her husband, even if only for a few brief moments.

She yanked him closer until her bare breasts pressed against his chest, feeling the electric contact that almost drowned out the itching in her head, and made the visions and hallucinations blur out in the intensity of pleasure.

Sam's breaths were fast and tight as he thrust into her, sweat-gleaming skin sliding against hers, incoherent noises coming from his throat as they clung to each other, driving towards a hasty but necessary release.

Kara was barely able to close her eyes and let the chaos overwhelm her, let her fly high on a moment of blissful calm and clarity, falling back into the bed as Sam found his own finish, crying out softly against her shoulder.

For a beat, there was only a warm haze around them, together in the mutual escape that marriage offered as an incentive to put up with the frustration. Sam rolled to the side, their sweaty bodies still close in the fluttering aftershocks, catching quick breaths. Kara forgot everything. Then, a split second later, it was back.

Only this time it hit harsh and fast, cutting through the mayhem of her mind, image sharper than a razor. She gulped for another breath, eyes shut, as the vivid colors flooded her head. This time without red and gold, though, only blue and green and the darkness of space. Gods help her, she knew what it was without knowing, and as much as her stomach twisted into a tight knot she felt a thrill of purpose at the same time.

"Sam," she breathed out. "I know the way to Earth."

He flinched beside her, a distracted, "What?" coming mumbled from his lips.

Motherfrakking revelations never hit at a good time. Staring at the bunk above her, body settling down into normality, the vision only solidified in her head. Intrusive, random, important—she had to say it again, feeling it deep in her bones. "I know the way to Earth."

Sam scooted up, supported on one arm, looking at her with an almost disturbed expression. "How?"

The minute he said it she saw the cipher. "That's what these frakking visions are. That's why I'm going nuts, that's why nothing makes sense. The gods have a sense of humor—I know the way to Earth.

He didn't answer, and in the silence Kara felt pressure rising in her chest. Need to act hit her without her trying for it, and she knew there was no turning back. Sam would know it too—she bit her tongue for now, but knew that she couldn't hold it for long. Frak everything, but it should scare her more. And yet she could hardly remember ever not knowing it.

The world was suddenly in different colors, and Kara was no longer fighting, but simply dragged along for the ride and feeling nothing more than the desire to go along. Frak, frak, frak.

*

They didn't seem to realize that their fears were coming true. Sam was the one to tell Julia what Kara's flinch when Galactica jumped meant. He said it with weary eyes that startled her with how little doubt was there, the story falling out as if it was an old cliche that everyone knew. It wasn't. "That's impossible," she said flatly.

"You've had the dreams, you know about the mandala."

Julia shook her head, biting down hard on her lip. "No. No, that's just some messed up Cylon influence, it's not a message from the _gods_. Don't blaspheme, don't go there."

"Don't go where, accepting that maybe visions and prophecies are real?" Sam demanded. "This isn't just insanity. It makes too much sense."

"Yes, _too_ much sense," Julia protested. The look on his face, on Kara's, made her start panicking. It was too easy and too much to handle all at once. She couldn't help glancing to Kacey, thinking of the dreams and wondering what the frak these insane people thought her part was.

Kara breathed out and wrenched herself from her seat at the table, no longer rubbing her head as if it hurt. "Don't say that, you don't know what you're talking about. As if this makes any frakking sense—it doesn't. It's just _right_."

"And Kacey?" Julia felt her jaw stiffen, even if she had no retort in her stunned state.

No answer. Not even one on their faces that they wouldn't say out loud. Just nothing.

"Frak," Julia whispered, not having any defense for this.

"Our thoughts exactly," Sam murmured, and Julia hated that it pulled her in.

She hadn't thought of Earth since first hearing about it. The place didn't matter to her, not the way a little bit of life and family did. But it was legend that no Colonial could deny as an archetype that stirred the blood. Stuck on these sardine-can ships, stress and insecure loyalties threatening around every corner, the word Earth had wings. And if there was anyone crazy-bold enough to give it credulity, she had to admit, it was them.

The strange thing was, Julia wasn't sure if that was bias or cynicism. "You can't know," she said again, even if it was a protest without heart.

"You try seeing, hearing, smelling visions, and then you tell me that," Kara snapped.

"Then what do we do?" Julia snapped right back.

They stood, three broken people in a tiny room, stuck in an inexplicable destiny with a half-Cylon child playing carelessly at their feet. Heads slightly dropped, arms crossed over chest or tense at sides, they frowned and had no answer. No one could have an answer to something like this.

"Adama," Kara finally said.

"He won't do anything," Sam objected.

"You don't know him," Kara said under her breath. "You don't know what this means to him."

Julia could have laughed then. Bitter, ironic, but it would have been a laugh. Because maybe Julia was just broken enough, just desperate enough, to see a potential miracle in madness—but the idea of the fleet just changing course on a whim of a flight jock, no matter how renowned, seemed far more unlikely. And yet she said nothing, because what else did they have.

"Frak, I didn't want to have to do this again," Sam groaned, and Kara grimaced, and once again Julia felt like she belonged.

Almost she said she'd watch Kacey for them—and then she realized that no one was expecting otherwise. She was an unmistakable part of this insane family, till death or cruel destiny do them part. "Look, look," Kacey said, tugging on the waist of Julia's pants with a picture in her hand. Julia tried to smile down at the girl, but more importantly she breathed out unsteadily at the realization that she'd gone off the deep end at last.

*

"No," Adama said after a pause of several minutes.

Another silence fell—Sam blinked, standing upright in his dress blues, Kara at his side with her arms crossed. Her eyes, carefully veiled of all urgency, darted between him as if the answer lay there. "Why?" she demanded.

"There's no discussion," Adama said in a low voice, eyebrows high. "You haven't shown professional stability lately, and I don't believe you see visions."

Kara paused to take a quick breath. "We didn't ask you to believe in visions, we wanted a chance to prove them." She waved her hand in protest, her tone and body language not quite giving off the air of humility and readiness to accept any executive orders.

"I'm not discussing this," Adama rumbled, looking back at the paperwork on his desk.

Not that Sam couldn't understand where the man was coming from, but he'd also bled and sweated with Kara these past few days, trying to realize among their intuitions which was cold insanity and which was an unwanted gift from the gods. It made him partial.

"No, frak it, you can't shut me out," Kara said, and the hint of panic behind her voice looked and sounded like outrage, especially as she planted her hands flat on the desk, leaning down more to his level. "This is _important_!"

Adama looked up with eyes now behind a film of distance. "Captain Thrace, back away."

Kara just looked back at him, as if uncomprehending. It had been a careful order, one that for most subordinates out of their mind would snap them into the military paradigm that had been whipped into them—but Sam knew that here it was miscalculated. Kara was too far gone for Adama to understand, perhaps even for Sam to understand. But it was Earth—they had to at least try.

"Sir, I swear, we wouldn't be here if it didn't matter to more than just us," Sam let out, supporting Kara even though he couldn't see it working out well.

"I'm not lying, sir." Kara's voice was so understated it seemed to reverberate, and all the undertones made Sam flinch.

"Don't say I accused you of doing so," Adama answered simply, ignoring Sam but meeting her eyes with a slight darkness. "This Fleet has no resources to spare for missions based on feelings."

"Frak, so you're saying shared visions are just feelings," Kara said, pulling herself back up as she answered the hypocrisy with a simmering frustration emanating from her stance. "That this _feeling_ I get every time we jump is just random, that it doesn't mean anything. That my remembering Earth, knowing what it looks like, is just some fantasy. You may be the leader of this Fleet, sir, but there's something bigger than you and you're just ignoring it."

A moment passed in which the words just sat there in the air, the surrounding emotion flitting away to leave them appearing shallow and flighty. Sam knew that their demands sound insane, even for everything that had happened to the Fleet so far. They might only be asking for a Raptor—but Adama wasn't going to look at the bare physical resources, just the reason he should give them up at all. Mystical dreams hadn't given them much, no matter their hopes.

Sam thought it all—Adama only had to say his few words. "I don't take anything on faith. And if I did, I wouldn't risk two people getting captured by the Cylons who could be suffering from delusions, and I'm not even mentioning your possible Cylon sympathies. If you want my belief in the tall tale you're offering, you'll need a much cleaner record than the one you have right now. Dismissed."

And Kara just turned on her heel and left.

*

"Frak, Sam, he's living in the past," Kara almost spat as soon as they'd returned to their quarters. Her head throbbed, and they hadn't even jumped yet. Since the last one, her whole body seemed to ache with the urge to run. Stars danced teasingly out every ship-side window, as if to remind her that she knew which one of them harbored Earth, their new home to-be. And Adama wouldn't let her find out for sure—it pained more than any injury that had landed her in Cottle's care, even when most of the skin burned off her hands. "We're going to keep jumping until I can't sense it anymore, and then we might as well bare our asses to the Cylons for a good frakking because we won't have anywhere to run to."

"Kara, look at me," Sam said, in a tight voice. She did, and recognized the crazed light in his eyes, and thought she might also read the same need for one thing to make sense. "We can't give up."

It made her skin bristle. "Oh, I bet you think you're helpful saying that," she snapped. "Like I just roll over at the first obstacle. Frak, Sam—" Not another word passed her lips, for then the ship jumped again, and a sharp pain in her head had her hands pressed against her temples, teeth grinding on each other. "Frak."

"Well, you're just standing there as if Adama had all the answers," Sam shot back, a bit of tense irritation leaking out, his hand waving. "Sometimes people don't just up and do what you want, you have to take charge."

Kara's thoughts went snarky almost immediately, but they didn't last, and her tone was quick and ruthless, hiding the desperation. "This is wrong."

"What's new?"

Her mind was burning down to a single focus, wiping everything out of the way but the sense that if she just got a chance to look she could find Earth. She needed a ship like she needed air to breathe, and it would have scared her if she just had the thought for it. But she didn't. She couldn't even remember her family, friends, loyalties, nothing beyond the space in which she now stood. "I'm getting a Raptor, Sam."

He glanced over at her, not understanding.

"You're deck security, Chief won't think twice about us going down, and I can fly one."

"Wait, Kara, no," Sam protested. "You're going to _steal_ one?"

She felt her brow tighten as she knew without a doubt what lengths she would go to when answering this call. "Frak yes, Sam. There's no way I'm not—there must be some kind of way out of here, and frak me if I'm going to let the Admiral ignore it." Her muscles itched to move, so she paced, at the back of her eyes a remnant of a vision, pulling her forward like gravity itself.

"What the hell are we doing?" Sam demanded, waving his hand in her face, conflict and bewilderment on his face. "Kara, we have a family."

"And I'm going nuts," Kara answered with the same urgency. The memory of Kacey pained her, but couldn't pull the images of Earth from her head, couldn't even dislodge them. "If you think I'm going back to just fall apart with every jump until we destroy her life for good, then just frak off."

Sam grimaced, a hand rising to his face, eyes weary as he ran the hand back through his hair. "There's too much confusion here."

Kara knew exactly what he meant. But right or not, about anything, it didn't change the fact that she was going to follow this urge until the end of reality. It was the only path she could see to sanity again. "I'm stealing a Raptor and finding Earth, Sam."

"I'm coming with you," he muttered.

"Damn right you are," she answered, clenching her hands, one around the pistol at her side. "I need you to keep my pieces together again."

"May not be so good at that, right now."

"Doesn't matter."

"No, it doesn't." Sam let out a heavy breath, looking ready to twitch, but it was clear on his face that as long as he had a tad more control than her—a little less crazy destiny pulling her towards a desperate mission—he'd be there. He always was; it was kind of their thing, even when things turned to this. She might have laughed if it didn't hurt.

*

"What do you mean you're leaving?" Julia asked in barely above a whisper, hit with a sudden emotional strike to her gut as she looked into Kara's eyes. Crazed they might be, but no more than Julia had learned to deal with in these past weeks.

"Earth is just out there," she answered, voice taut. "If I keep holding back, I'll break, and we're all lost forever."

"You can't do this to Kacey," Julia protested, meeting Kara's eyes with the anger of panic. This wasn't how it was supposed to go—they were supposed to heal, not break apart. And she was finally getting closer, even as the visions made her shiver.

"This is _for_ Kacey," Kara said back without hesitation, even as her brow drew close over her dark eyes. "I can't _see_ her anymore because of these frakking colors."

"And what if this isn't some vision?" Julia couldn't help but demand. "What if you lose yourself out there? What will we do?"

There was a moment where it looked like Kara would laugh, crazed and unsteady, barely holding herself together. "I'll have Sam. And if we don't come back—if the universe decides to frak us sideways—she was always your kid too. I trust you."

The words hurt like stabs to the gut, and Julia wanted to reach for Kara and cling on, not letting her go. But she couldn't. She'd seen the Opera House; she knew Kara had to go through the open doors into the light, leaving Kacey standing behind. Julia would be there to guard the home until she came back, but she couldn't escape the feeling that Sam and Kara had just woven her into their lives, until now they were flying away and just leaving her lost again. This must have been what Paulla felt.

"You're coming back," she said fiercely past the sharp lump in her throat, the desperate panic of having loved ones torn away rising. "If you don't, I will track you down and kill you, because you can _not_ do that to Kacey. Find Earth, but don't you dare not come back."

Kara did laugh, then. An empty laugh of one who didn't have the mind to devote to mirth, but who understood it at least in principle. "It's out there, Julia. So close. We'll be back, and then we can all go home, I just know it."

Julia met those dark twisted eyes, full of determination that came as much from need as intuition, and just nodded. "As long as you come back to this home first."

After a swallow, Kara turned with clenching hand to find Sam, speak hastily with him. Julia looked back to where Kacey napped, clutching one of her toys close to her chest. She didn't believe in the gods, but wondered if she had to now, just so she could pray that this wasn't the disaster it seemed. Kara was Starbuck—maybe she was one of the gods themselves after all. But she prayed most of all that Kara would return with final healing on her face, so that Kacey could have a full family again.

Her last look was to Sam as he passed with high tension on his face, meeting his eyes and searching for the stability that would save Kara if she stumbled. And she didn't see it. The twisted hope and faith in her gut remained, but it felt like only her stubbornness holding it in place.

It would be just her and Kacey, like she'd always meant for it to be. Only now it would always feel incomplete.

*

Kara wasn't even trying to hold onto reality anymore. It was long gone, and she was fighting through a swirling storm, struggling for breath, reaching for the light at the end of the tunnel. Sam at her side only gave her enough stability to not be driven back into the depths of it. The world had gone insane around her, and was seeping into her blood, filling her with the reckless need for Earth and Earth alone.

Rules, past and present, held no hold on her mind as she and Sam left their family behind and went down to the hangar deck. Whatever Sam focused on, it wasn't enough for even him to point out how much madness was in this. They were riding the same crazy train that one could only hope was being driven by destiny.

No one saw their purpose as they passed among the few people and ships standing about at the quiet hour of the night. When Sam separated and firmly ordered the marine standing at the foot of a Raptor, he left without question. When Kara switched the flight schedule on the computer before climbing into the same Raptor, no one paid her mind. Galactica was nearly ready to jump and she felt it in her blood—there was no time. She had to make the first move.

"All set," Sam said behind her head as he followed, shutting the hatch behind them.

The air throbbed as Kara lit up the engines, and she could almost hear destiny sing. A smile at how good the insanity felt danced across her lips as her heart beat fast. Control was in her hands, but it was from deep within her that she felt the direction, like a compass pointing her towards everything they'd ever wanted.

She didn't hear the panicked chatter on the radio as she flew into the airlock and prepared to depart. Only just barely did she feel Sam's hand on her shoulder, his presence a quiet solid support that yet tensed as the outer airlock spread and gave her only the vision of the stars. She flipped on the blind jump as the ship sprang out into the blackness.

 _None of them along the line know what any of it is worth._ Kara spun up the FTL, still feeling as if her mind was in a swirling storm, with the eye of it drawing near. She closed her eyes for a second, breathing it in, accepting this destiny because she had no choice—and it flashed behind her eyes. The mandala was the storm.

Space was dark and black as she hit the FTL button, diving down into the center of the circle that had haunted her sight for weeks. All she wanted was Earth on the other side.  
 _ **  
The End.**_


End file.
